e Children of
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i*mM'i0*?n ^u9ust/T"he children of the6p

3 1723 00018 8649

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

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in 2009

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THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

BY

JACOB A. RIIS

AUTHOR OF “HOW THE OTHER HALF UVHRT

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK

CHARLES

SCRIBNER’S SONS
1923

Copyright, 1892, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

Printed in the United States of America

PREFACE

To my little ones, who, as I lay down my pen, come rush¬
ing in from the autumn fields, their hands filled with
flowers “ for the poor children,” I inscribe this book.
May the love that shines in their eager eyes never grow
cold within them ; then they shall yet grow up to give a
helping hand in working out this problem which so
plagues the world to-day. As to their father’s share, it
has been a very small and simple one, and now it is done.
Other hands may carry forward the work. My aim has
been to gather the facts for them to build upon. I said
it in “ How the Other Half Lives,” and now, in sending
this volume to the printer, I can add nothing. The two
books are one. Each supplements the other. Ours is an
age of facts. It wants facts, not theories, and facts I have
endeavored to set down in these pages. The reader may
differ with me as to the application of them. He may be
right and I wrong. But we shall not quarrel as to the
facts themselves, I think. A false prophet in our day
could do less harm than a careless reporter. That name
I hope I shall not deserve.

To lay aside a work that has been so long a part of
one’s life, is like losing a friend. But for the one lost
I have gained many. They have been much to me.
The friendship and counsel of Dr. "Roger S. Tracy, of
the Bureau of Vital Statistics, have lightened my labors

VI

PREFACE

as nothing else could save the presence and the sympa¬
thy of the best and dearest friend of all, my wife. To
Major Willard Bullard, the most efficient chief of the
Sanitary Police ; Rabbi Adolph M. Radin ; Mr. A. S.
Solomons, of the Baron de Hirscli Relief Committee ; Dr.
Annie Sturges Daniel : Mr. L. W. Holste, of the Chil¬
dren’s Aid Society; Colonel George T. Balch, of the
Board of Education ; Mr. A. S. Fairchild, and to Dr. Max
L. Margolis, my thanks are due and here given. Jew
and Gentile, we have sought the truth together. Our
reward must be in the consciousness that we have sought
it faithfully and according to our light.

Richmond Hill, Long Island,
October 1, 1892.

J. A. R.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.

PAGE

The Problem of the Children,^ . 1

CHAPTER II.

The Italian Slum Children,^ . 10

CHAPTER III.

In the Great East Side Treadmill, . . „ . . 35

CHAPTER IV.

Tony and His Tribe, . 58

CHAPTER V.

The Story of Kid McDuff’s Girl, . 87

CHAPTER VI.

The Little Toilers, . 92

CHAPTER VII.

The Truants of Our Streets, . v . 118

CHAPTER VIII.

What it is that Makes Boys Bad, x

129

Vlll

CONTENTS

CHAPTER IX.

Little Mary Ellen’s Legacy, .

CHAPTER X.

The Story of the Fresh Air Fund,
CHAPTER XL

The Kindergartens and Nurseries,

CHAPTER XII.
The Industrial Schools, .

CHAPTER XIII.

The Boys* Clubs,

CHAPTER XIV.

The Outcast and the Homeless,

CHAPTER XV.

Putting a Premium on Pauperism, .

CHAPTER XVI.

The Verdict of the Potter’s Field,
Register of Children’s Charities, •

PAGE

. . . 142

. . . 153

. . . 174

. . . 187

. . . 215

. . . 245

. . . 277

. . . 286

. i . 291

LIST of illustrations

Saluting the Flag, . Frontispiece

PAGE

The Mott Street Barracks, . 16

An Italian Home under a Dump, . 25

A Child of the Dump, . 28

Pietro Learning to Make an Englis’ Letter, . . » . .32

“ Slept in that Cellar Four Years,” . 41

A Synagogue School in a Hester Street Tenement, . . . .46

The Backstairs to Learning, . 48

Class of Melammedim Learning English, . 50

“ I Scrubs.” — Katie, who Keeps House in West Forty-ninth Street, 61
Present Tenants of John Ericsson’s Old House, now the Beach

Street Industrial School, . 73

Their Playground a Truck, . 86

Shine, Sir? . 100

Little Susie at her Work, . . 110

Minding the Baby, . 114

44 Shooting Craps ’’ in the Hall of the Newsboys’ Lodging House . 122

X

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAwE

Case No. 25,745 on the Society’s Blotter, Before and After, . . 146

Club Used for Beating a Child, . .152

Summer Boarders from Mott Street, . • • • . j58

Making for the “ Big Water,” . 167

Floating Hospital — St. John’s Guild, . 169

Playing at Housekeeping, . 177

Poverty Gappers Playing Coney Island, . 183

Poverty Gap Transformed — the Spot where Young Healey was

murdered is now a Playground, ...... 185

The Late Charles Loring Brace, Founder of the Children’s Aid So¬
ciety, . 188

The First Patriotic Election in the Beach Street Industrial School

— Parlor in John Ericsson’s Old House, .... 201
The Board of Election Inspectors in the Beach Street School, . 207
The Plumbing Shop in the New York Trade Schools, . . . 212

A Boys’ Club Reading-room, . 222

The Carpenter Shop in the Avenue C Working Boys’ Club, . . 226

Type-setting at the Avenue C Working Boys’ Club, . . . 231

A Bout with the Gloves in the Boys’ Club of Calvary Parish, . . 235

Lining up for the Gymnasium, ....... 240

A Snug Corner on a Cold Night, . • 246

2 a.m. in the Delivery-room in the uSun ’’ Office, . . . 261

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS XI

, PAGE

Buffalo, . 264

Night School in the West Side Lodging-house.— Edward, the Little

Pedlar, Caught Napping, . 265

The “Soup-House Gang,” Class in History in the Duane Street

Newsboy’s Lodging-house, . 269

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

CHAPTER I.

THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILDREN

THE problem of the children is the problem of the
State. As we mould the children of the toiling
masses in our cities, so we shape the destiny of the State
which they will rule in their turn, taking the reins from
our hands. In proportion as we neglect or pass them by,
the blame for bad government to come rests upon us.
The cities long since held the balance of power ; their do¬
minion will be absolute soon unless the near future finds
some way of scattering the population which the era of
steam-power and industrial development has crowded to¬
gether in the great centres of that energy. At the begin¬
ning of the century the urban population of the United
States was 3.97 per cent, of the whole, or not quite one in
twenty-five. To-day it is 29.12 per cent., or nearly one
in three. In the lifetime of those who were babies in
arms when the first gun was fired upon Fort Sumter it
has all but doubled. A million and a quarter live to-day
in the tenements of the American metropolis. Clearly,
there is reason for the sharp attention given at last to the
life and the doings of the other half, too long unconsidered

2

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

Philanthropy we call it sometimes with patronizing airs.
Better call it self-defence.

In Hew York there is all the more reason because it is
the open door through which pours in a practically unre¬
stricted immigration, unfamilar with and unattuned to our
institutions ; the dumping-ground where it rids itself of
its burden of helplessness and incapacity, leaving the pro¬
cession of the strong and the able free to move on. This
sediment forms the body of our poor, the contingent that
lives always from hand to mouth, with no provision and
no means of providing for the morrow. In the first gen¬
eration it pre-empts our slums ; * in the second, its worst
elements, reinforced by the influences that prevail there,
develop the tough, who confronts society with the claim
that the world owes him a living and that he will collect
it in his own way. His plan is a practical application of
the spirit of our free institutions as his opportunities
have enabled him to grasp it.

Thus it comes about that here in Hew York to seek
the children of the poor one must go among those who, if
the}7 did not themselves come over the sea, can rarely count
back another generation born on American soil. Hot that
there is far to go. Any tenement district will furnish its
own tribe, or medley of many tribes. Hor is it by any
means certain that the children when found will own their
alien descent. Indeed, as a preliminary to gaining their
confidence, to hint at such a thing would be a bad blunder.

* It is, nevertheless, true that while immigration peoples our slums
it also keeps them from stagnation. The working of the strong instinct
to better themselves, that brought the crowds here, forces layer after
layer of this population up to make room for the new crowds coming in
at the bottom, and thus a circulation is kept up that does more than
any sanitary law to render the slums harmless. Even the useless sedi¬
ment is kept from rotting by being constantly stirred.

THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILDREN

3

The ragged Avenue B boy, whose father at his age had
barely heard, in his corner of the Fatherland, of America
as a place where the streets were paved with nuggets of
gold and roast pigeons flew into mouths opening wide with
wonder, would, it is safe to bet, be as prompt to resent the
insinuation that he was a “ Dutchman,” as would the little
“ Mick ” the Teuton’s sore taunt. Even the son of the
immigrant Jew in his virtual isolation strains impatiently
at the fetters of race and faith, while the Italian takes
abuse philosophically only when in the minority and bides
his time until he too shall be able to prove his title by
calling those who came after him names. However, to
quarrel with the one or the other on that ground would be
useless. It is the logic of the lad’s evolution, the way of
patriotism in the slums. His sincerity need not be ques¬
tioned.

Many other things about him may be, and justly are,
but not that. It is perfectly transparent. His badness is
as spontaneous as his goodness, and for the moment all
there is of the child. Whichever streak happens to pre¬
vail, it is in full possession ; if the bad is on top more fre¬
quently than the other, it is his misfortune rather than his
design. He is as ready to give his only cent to a hungrier
boy than he if it is settled that he can “lick” him, and that
he is therefore not a rival, as he is to join him in torturing
an unoffending cat for the common cheer. The penny
and the cat, the charity and the cruelty, are both pregnant
facts in the life that surrounds him, and of which he is to
be the coming exponent. In after years, when he is ar¬
rested by the officers of the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals for beating his horse, the episode adds
but to his confusion of mind in which a single impression
stands out clear and lasting, viz., that somehow he got the

4

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

worst of it as usual. But for tlie punishment, the whole
proceeding must seem ludicrous to him. As it is he sub¬
mits without comprehending. He had to take the hard
knocks always ; why should not his horse ?

In other words, the child is a creature of environment, of
opportunity, as children are everywhere. And the environ¬
ment here has been bad, as it was and is in the lands across
the sea that sent him to us. Our slums have fairly ri¬
valled, and in some respects outdone, the older ones after
which they patterned. Still, there is a difference, the dif¬
ference between the old slum and the new. The hope¬
lessness, the sullen submission of life in East London as
we have seen it portrayed, has no counterpart here ;
neither has the child born in the gutter and predestined
by the order of society, from which there is no appeal,
to die there. We have our Lost Tenth to fill the trench
in the Potter’s Field ; quite as many wrecks at the fin¬
ish, perhaps, but the start seems fairer in the promise.
Even on the slums the doctrine of liberty has set its
stamp. To be sure, for the want of the schooling to de¬
cipher it properly, they spell it license there, and the slip
makes trouble. The tough and his scheme of levying
tribute are the result. But the police settle that with
him, and when it comes to a choice, the tough is to be
preferred to the born pauper any day. The one has the
making of something in him, unpromising as he looks ;
seen in a certain light he may even be considered a hopeful
symptom. The other is just so much dead loss. The
tough is not born : he is made. The all-important point
is the one at which the manufacture can be stopped.

So rapid and great are the changes in American cities,
that no slum has yet had a chance here to grow old enough
to distil its deadliest poison. New York has been no

THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILDREN

5

exception. But we cannot always go at so fast a pace.
There is evidence enough in the crystallization of the vary¬
ing elements of the population along certain lines, no longer
as uncertain as they were, that we are slowing up already.
Any observer of the poor in this city is familiar with the
appearance among them of that most distressing and most
dangerous symptom, the home-feeling for the slum that
opposes all efforts at betterment with dull indifference.
Pauperism seems to have grown faster of late than even
the efforts put forth to check it. We have witnessed this
past winter a dozen times the spectacle of beggars extorting
money by threats or violence without the excuse which a
season of exceptional distress or hardship might have fur¬
nished. Further, the raid in the last Legislature upon the
structure of law built up in a generation to regulate and keep
the tenements within safe limits, shows that fresh danger
threatens in the alliance of the slum with politics. Only
the strongest public sentiment, kept always up to the point
of prompt action, avails to ward off this peril. But pub¬
lic sentiment soon wearies of such watch-duty, as instanced
on this occasion, when several bills radically remodelling
the tenement-house law and repealing some of its most
beneficent provisions, had passed both houses and were
in the hands of the Governor before a voice was raised
against them, or anyone beside the politicians and their
backers seemed even to have heard of them. And this hard¬
ly five years after a special commission of distinguished citi¬
zens had sat an entire winter under authority of the State
considering the tenement-house problem, and as the re¬
sult of its labors had secured as vital the enactment of
the very law against which the raid seemed to be chiefly
directed !

The tenement and the saloon, with the street that does not

6

THE CHILDREN OF TITE POOR

always divide them, form the environment that is to make
or unmake the child. The influence of each of the three
is bad. Together they have power to overcome the strong¬
est resistance. But the child born under their evil spell
has none such to offer. The testimony of all to whom has
fallen the task of undoing as much of the harm done by
them as may be, from the priest of the parish school to the
chaplain of the penitentiary, agrees upon this point, that
even the tough, with all his desperation, is weak rather than
vicious. He promises well, he even means well ; he is as
downright sincere in his repentance as he was in his wrong¬
doing ; but it doesn’t prevent him from doing the very
same evil deed over again the minute he is rid of restraint.
He would rather be a saint than a sinner; but somehow
he doesn’t keep in the role of saint, while the police
help perpetuate the memory of his wickedness. After
all, he is not so very different from the rest of us. Per¬
haps that, with a remorseful review of the chances he
has had, may help to make a fellow-feeling for him in
us.

That is what he needs. The facts clearly indicate that
from the environment little improvement in the child is
to be expected. There has been progress in the way of
building the tenements of late years, but they swarm
with greater crowds than ever — good reason why they
challenge the pernicious activity of the politician ; and the
old rookeries disappear slowly. In the relation of the
saloon to the child there has been no visible improvement,
and the street is still his refuge. It is, then, his opportu¬
nities outside that must be improved if relief is to come.
We have the choice of hailing him man and brother or of
being slugged and robbed by him. It ought not to be a
hard choice, despite the tatters and the dirt, for which our

THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILDREN

7

past neglect is in great part to blame. Plenty of evidence
will be found in these pages to show that it has been made
in the right spirit already, and that it has proved a wise
choice. No investment gives a better return to-day on
t lie capital put out than work among the children of the
poor.

A single fact will show what is meant by that. With¬
in the lifetime of the Children’s Aid Society, in the thirty
years between 1860 and 1890, while the population of this
city was doubled, the commitments of girls and women for
vagrancy fell off from 5,880 to 1.980, while the commit¬
ments of girl thieves fell between 1865 and 1890 from
1 in 743 to 1 in 7,500.* Stealing and vagrancy among
boys has decreased too ; if not so fast, yet at a gratifying
rate.

Enough has been written and said about the children of
the poor and their sufferings to make many a bigger book
than this. From some of it one might almost be led to
believe that one-half of the children are worked like
slaves from toddling infancy, while the other half wander
homeless and helpless about the streets. Their miseries
are great enough without inventing any that do not exist.
There is no such host of child outcasts in New York as that.
Thanks to the unwearied efforts of the children’s societies
in the last generation, what there is is decreasing, if any¬
thing. As for the little toilers, they will receive attention
further on. There are enough of them, but as a whole they
are anything but a repining lot. They suffer less, to their
own knowledge, from their wretched life than the com¬
munity suffers for letting them live it, though it, too, sees
the truth but in glimpses. If the question were put to a

* Report of committing magistrates. See Annual Report of Children’s
Aid Society, 1891.

8

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

vote of the children to-morrow, whether they would take
the old life with its drawbacks, its occasional starvation,
and its everyday kicks and hard knocks ; or the good
clothes, the plentiful grub, and warm bed, with all the
restraints of civilized society and the “ Sunday-school
racket ” of the other boy thrown in, I have as little doubt
that the street would carry the day by a practically unan¬
imous vote as I have that there are people still to be found
— too many of them — who would indorse the choice with a
sigh of relief and dismiss the subject, if it could be dis¬
missed that way ; which, happily, it cannot.

The immediate duty which the community has to per¬
form for its own protection is to school the children first of
all into good Americans, and next into useful citizens. As
a community it has not attended to this duty as it should;
but private effort has stepped in and is making up for its
neglect with encouraging success. The outlook that was
gloomy from the point of view of the tenement, brightens
when seen from this angle, however toilsome the road yet
ahead. The inpouring of alien races no longer darkens it.
The problems that seemed so perplexing in the light of
freshly-formed prejudices against this or that immigrant,
yield to this simple solution that discovers all alarm to
have been groundless. Yesterday it was the swarthy Ital¬
ian, to-day the Russian Jew, that excited our distrust.
To-morrow it may be the Arab or the Greek. All alike
they have taken, or are taking, their places in the ranks
of our social phalanx, pushing upward from the bottom
with steady effort, as I believe they will continue to do un¬
less failure to provide them with proper homes arrests the
process. And in the general advance the children, thus
firmly grasped, are seen to be a powerful moving force.
The one immigrant who does not keep step, who, having

THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILDREN

9

fallen out of the ranks, lias been ordered to the rear, is
the Chinaman, who brought neither wife nor children to
push him ahead. He left them behind that he might not
become an American, and by the standard he himself set
up he has been judged-

CHAPTER 1 i.

THE ITALIAN SLUM CHILDREN
HO and where are the slum children of Hew York

▼ ▼ to-day ? That depends on what is understood by
the term. The moralist might seek them in Hell's Kitchen,
in Battle Row, and in the tenements, east and west, where
the descendants of the poorest Irish immigrants live. They
are the ones, as I have before tried to show, upon whom the
tenement and the saloon set their stamp soonest and deep¬
est. The observer of physical facts merely would doubtless
pick out the Italian ragamuffins first, and from his stand¬
point he would be right. Irish poverty is not picturesque
in the Hew World, whatever it may have been in the Old.
Italian poverty is. The worst old rookeries fall every¬
where in this city to the share of the immigrants from
Southern Italy, who are content to occupy them, partly,
perhaps, because they are no worse than the hovels they
left behind, but mainly because they are tricked or bullied
into putting up with them by their smarter countrymen
who turn their helplessness and ignorance to good account.
Wherever the invasion of some old home section by the
tide of business has left ramshackle tenements falling into
hopeless decay, as in the old “ Africa,” in the Bend, and
in many other places in the down-town wards, the Italian
sweater landlord is ready with his offer of a lease to bridge
over the interregnum, a lease that takes no account of re¬
pairs or of the improvements the owner sought to avoid.

THE ITALIAN SLUM CHILDREN

11

The crowds to make it profitable to him are never wanting.
The bait he holds out is a job at the ash-dump with which
he connects at the other end of the line. The house, the
job, and the man as he comes to them fit in well together,
and the copartnership has given the Italian a character
which, I am satisfied from close observation of him, he does
not wholly deserve. At all events, his wife does not.
Dirty as he seems and is in the old rags that harmonize so
well with his surroundings, there is that about her which
suggests not only the capacity for better things, but a wil¬
lingness to be clean and to look decent, if cause can be
shown. It may be a bright kerchief, a bit of old-fashioned
jewelry, or the neatly smoothed and braided hair of the
wrinkled old hag who presides over the stale bread counter.
Even in the worst dens occupied by these people, provided
that they had not occupied them too long, I have found
this trait crop out in the careful scrubbing of some piece of
oil-cloth rescued from the dump and laid as a mat in front
of the family bed ; or in a bit of fringe on the sheet or
quilt, ragged and black with age though it was, that
showed what a fruitful soil proper training and decent
housing would have found there.

I have in mind one Italian “flat” among many, a half
underground hole in a South Fifth Avenue yard, reached
by odd passage-ways through a tumbledown tenement that
was always full of bad smells and scooting rats. Across
the foul and slippery yard, down three steps made of
charred timbers from some worse wreck, was this “flat,”
where five children slept with their elders. How many
of those there were I never knew. There were three big
family beds, and they nearly filled the room, leaving only
patches of the mud floor visible. The walls were abso¬
lutely black with age and smoke. The plaster had fallen

12

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

off in patches and there was green mould on the ceiling.
And yet, with it all, with the swarm of squirming young¬
sters that were as black as the floor they rolled upon,
there was evidence of a desperate, if hopeless, groping
after order, even neatness. The beds were made up as
nicely as they could be with the old quilts and pieces of
carpet that served for covering. In Poverty Gap, where
an Italian would be stoned as likely as not, there would
have been a heap of dirty straw instead of beds, and the
artistic arrangement of tallow-dips stuck in the necks of
bottles about the newspaper cut of a saint on the corner
shelf would have been missing altogether, fervent though
the personal regard might be of Poverty Gap for the saint.
The bottles would have been the only part of the exhibi¬
tion sure to be seen there.

I am satisfied that this instinct inhabits not only the
more aristocratic Genoese, but his fellow countryman from
the southern hills as well, little as they resemble each
other or agree in most things. But the Neapolitan espe¬
cially does not often get a chance to prove it. He is so
altogether uninviting an object when he presents himself,
fresh from the steamer, that he falls naturally the victim
of the slum tenement, which in his keep becomes, despite
the vigilance of the sanitary police, easily enough the con¬
venient depot and half-way house between the garbage-
dump and the bone-factory. Starting thus below the bot¬
tom, as it were, he has an up-hill journey before him if he
is to work out of the slums, and the promise, to put it
mildly, is not good. He does it all the same, or, if not
he, his boy. It is not an Italian sediment that breeds the
tough. Parental authority has a strong enough grip on
the lad in Mulberry Street to make him work, and that is
his salvation. “ In seventeen years,” said the teacher of

THE ITALIAN SLUM CHILDREN

13

the oldest Italian ragged school in the city that, day and
night, takes in quite six hundred, “ I have seen my boys
work up into decent mechanics and useful citizens almost
to a man, and of my girls only two I know of have gone
astray.” I had observed the process often enough myself
to know that she was right. It is to be remembered,
furthermore, that her school is in the very heart of the
Five Points district, and takes in always the worst and the
dirtiest crowds of children.

Within a year there lias been, through some caprice of
immigration, a distinct descent in the quality of the children,
viewed from even the standard of cleanliness that prevails
at the Five Points. Perhaps the exodus from Italy has
worked farther south, where there seems to be an unusual
supply of mud. Perhaps the rivalry of steamship lines
has brought it about. At any rate, the testimony is posi¬
tive that the children that came to the schools after last
vacation, and have kept coming since, were the worst seen
here since the influx began. I have watched with satis¬
faction, since this became apparent, some of the bad old
tenements, which the newcomers always sought in droves,
disappear to make room for great factory buildings. But
there are enough left. The cleaning out of a Mulberry
Street block left one lop-sided old rear tenement that had
long since been shut in on three sides by buildings four
stories higher than itself, and forgotten by all the world
save the miserable wretches who burrowed in that dark
and dismal pit at the bottom of a narrow alley. Now, when
the fourth structure goes up against its very windows, it
will stand there in the heart of the block, a survival of
the unfittest, that, in all its disheartening dreariness, bears
testimony, nevertheless, to the beneficent activity of the
best Board of Health New York has ever had — the onward

14

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

sweep of business. It will wipe that last remnant out
also, even if the law lack the power to reach it.

Shoals of Italian children lived in that rookery, and in
those the workmen tore down, in the actual physical
atmosphere of the dump. Not a gun-shot away there is a
block of tenements, known as the Mott Street Barracks, in
which still greater shoals are — I was going to say housed,
but that would have been a mistake. Happily they are
that very rarely, except when they are asleep, and not
then if they can help it. Out on the street they may be
found tumbling in the dirt, or up on the roof lying stark-
naked, blinking in the sun — content with life as they find
it. If they are not a very cleanly crew, they are at least
as clean as the frame they are set in, though it must be
allowed that something has been done of late years to re¬
deem the buildings from the reproach of a bad past. The
combination of a Jew for a landlord and a saloon-keeper —
Italian, of course — for a lessee, was not propitious ; but the
buildings happen to be directly under the windows of the
Health Board, and something, I suppose, was due to ap¬
pearances. The authorities did all that could be done,
short of tearing down the tenement, but though compara¬
tively clean, and not nearly as crowded as it was, it is still
the old slum. It is an instructive instance of what can
and cannot be done with the tenements into which we
invite these dirty strangers to teach them American ways
and the self-respect of future citizens and voters. There
are five buildings — that is, five front and four rear houses,
the latter a story higher than those on the street ; that is
because the rear houses were built last, to a accommodate”
this very Italian immigration that could be made to pay
for anything. Chiefly Irish had lived there before, but
they moved out then. There were 360 tenants in the

THE ITALIAN SLUM CHILDREN

15

Barracks when the police census was taken in 1888, and
40 of them were babies. How many were romping
children I do not know. The “yard” they had to play
in is just 5 feet 10 inches wide, and a dozen steps below
the street-level. The closets of all the buildings are in
the cellar of the rear houses and open upon this “ yard,”
where it is always dark and damp as in a dungeon. Its
foul stenches reach even the top floor, but so also does the
sun at mid-day, and that is a luxury that counts as an extra
in the contract with the landlord. The rent is nearly one-
half higher near the top than it is on the street-level.
Nine dollars above, six and a half below, for one room
with windows, two without, and with barely space for a
bed in each. But water-pipes have been put in lately,
under orders from the Health Department, and the rents
have doubtless been raised. “No windows” means no
ventilation. The rear building backs up against the tene¬
ment on the next street ; a space a foot wide separates
them, but an attempt to ventilate the bed-rooms by win¬
dows on that was a failure.

When the health officers got through with the Barracks
in time for the police census of 1891, the 360 tenants had
been whittled down to 238, of whom 47 were babies
under five years. Persistent effort had succeeded in es¬
tablishing a standard of cleanliness that was a very great
improvement upon the condition prevailing in 1888. But
still, as I have said, the slum remained and will remain as
long as that rear tenement stands. In the four years fifty-
one funerals had gone out from the Barracks. The white
hearse alone had made thirty- five trips carrying baby
coffins. This was the way the two standards showed up
in the death returns at the Bureau of Vital Statistics: in
1888 the adult death-rate, in a population of 320 over five

THE MOTT STREET BARRACKS.

THE ITALIAN SLUM CHILDREN

17

years old, was 15.62 per 1,000 ; the baby death-rate, 325.00
per 1,000, or nearly one-third in a total of 40. As a mat¬
ter of fact 13 of the 40 had died that year. The adult
death-rate for the entire tenement population of more than
a million souls was that year 12.81, and the baby death-
rate 88.38. Last year, in 1891, the case stood thus: Total
population, 238, including 47 babies. Adult death-rate
per 1,000, 20.94 ; child death-rate (under five years) per
1,000, 106.38. General adult death-rate for 1891 in the
tenements, 14.25 ; general child death-rate for 1891 in
the tenements, 86.67. It should be added that the re¬
duced baby death-rate of the Barracks, high as it was,
was probably much lower than it can be successfully
maintained. The year before, in 1890, when practically
the same improved conditions prevailed, it was twice as
high. Twice as many babies died.

I have referred to some of the typical Italian tenements
at some length to illustrate the conditions under which
their children grow up and absorb the impressions that
are to shape their lives as men and women. Is it to be
marvelled at, if the first impression of them is sometimes
not favorable ? I recall, not without amusement, one of
the early experiences of a committee with which I was
trying to relieve some of the child misery in the East Side
tenements by providing an outing for the very poorest of
the little ones, who might otherwise have been overlooked.
In our anxiety to make our little charges as presentable as
possible, it seems we had succeeded so well as to arouse a
suspicion in our friends at the other end of the line that
something was wrong, either with us or with the poor of
which the patrician youngsters in new frocks and with clean
faces, that came to them, were representatives. They
wrote to us that they were in the field for the “ slum
2

18

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

children,” and slum children they wanted. It happened
that their letter came just as we had before us two little
lads from the Mulberry Street Bend, ragged, dirty, un¬
kempt, and altogether a sight to see. Our wardrobe was
running low, and we were at our wits’ end how to make
these come up to our standard. We sat looking at each
other after we had heard the letter read, all thinking the
same thing, until the most courageous said it : 44 Send them
as they are.” Well, we did, and waited rather breathlessly
for the verdict. It came, with the children, in a note by
return train, that said : 4 4 Not that kind, please ! ” And
after that we were allowed to have things our own way.

The two little fellows were Italians. In justice to our
frightened friends, it should be said that it was not their
nationality, but their rags, to which they objected ; but
not very many seasons have passed since the crowding of
the black-eyed brigade of 44 guinnies,” as they were con¬
temptuously dubbed, in ever-increasing numbers, into the
ragged schools and the kindergartens, was watched with
regret and alarm by the teachers, as by many others who
had no better cause. The event proved that the children
.were the real teachers. They had a more valuable lesson
to impart than they came to learn, and it has been a salu¬
tary one. To-day they are gladly welcomed. Their sunny
temper, which no hovel is dreary enough, no hardship has
power to cloud, has made them universal favorites, and
the discovery has been made by their teachers that as the
crowds pressed harder their school-rooms have marvel¬
lously expanded, until they embrace within their walls an
unsuspected multitude, even many a slum tenement itself,
cellar, 44 stoop,” attic, and all. Every lesson of cleanliness,
of order, and of English taught at the school is reflected
into some wretched home, and rehearsed there as far as

THE ITALIAN SLUM CHILDREN

19

the limited opportunities will allow. Ho demonstration
with soap and water upon a dirty little face but widens
the sphere of these chief promoters of education in the
slums. “ By ’m by,” said poor crippled Pietro to me,
with a sober look, as he labored away on his writing lesson,
holding down the paper with his maimed hand, “ I learn
t’ make an Englis’ letter ; maybe my fadder he learn too.”
1 had my doubts of the father. He sat watching Pietro
with a pride in the achievement that was clearly propor¬
tionate to the struggle it cost, and mirrored in his own
face every grimace and contortion the progress of educa¬
tion caused the boy. “ Si ! si ! ” he nodded, eagerly.
“ Pietro he good a boy ; make Englis’, Englis’ ! ” and he
made a flourish with his clay-pipe, as if he too were mak¬
ing the English letter that was the object of their common
veneration.

Perhaps it is as much his growing and well-founded dis¬
trust of the middle-man, whose unresisting victim he has
heretofore been, and his need of some other joint to con¬
nect him with the English-speaking world that surrounds
him, as any personal interest in book-learning, that impels
the illiterate Italian to bring his boy to school early and
see that he attends it. Greed has something to do with
it too. In their anxiety to lay hold of the child, the
charity schools have fallen into a way of bidding for him
with clothes, shoes, and other bait that is never lost on
Mulberry Street. Even sectarian scruples yield to such
an argument, and the parochial school, where they get
nothing but on the contrary are expected to contribute,
gets left.

In a few charity schools where the children are boarded
they have discovered this, and frown upon Italian children
unless there is the best of evidence that the father is

20

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

really unable to pay for their keep and not simply unwill¬
ing. But whatever his motive, the effect is to demon¬
strate in a striking way the truth of the observation that
real reform of poverty and ignorance must begin with the
children. In his case, at all events, the seed thus sown
bears some fruit in the present as well as in the coming
generation of toilers. The little ones, with their new
standards and new ambitions, become in a very real sense
missionaries of the slums, whose work of regeneration be¬
gins with their parents. They are continually fetched
away from school by the mother or father to act as inter¬
preters or go-betweens in all the affairs of daily life, to be
conscientiously returned within the hour stipulated by the
teacher, who offers no objection to this sort of interrup¬
tion, knowing it to be the best condition of her own suc¬
cess. One cannot help the hope that the office of trust
with which the children are thus invested may, in some
measure, help to mitigate their home-hardships. From
their birth they have little else, though Italian parents are
rarely cruel in the sense of abusing their offspring.

• It is the home itself that constitutes their chief hard¬
ship. It is only when his years offer the boy an oppor¬
tunity of escape to the street, that a ray of sunlight falls
into his life. In his backyard or in his alley it seldom
finds him out. Thenceforward most of his time is spent
there, until the school and the shop claim him, but not in
idleness. His mother toiled, while she bore him at her
breast, under burdens heavy enough to break a man’s
back. She lets him out of her arms only to share her
labor. How well he does it anyone may see for himself
by watching the children that swarm where an old house
is being torn down, lugging upon their heads loads of
kindling wood twice their own size and sometimes larger

THE ITALIAN SLUM CHILDREN

21

than that. They come, as crows scenting carrion, from
every side at the first blow of the axe. Their odd old-
mannish or old-womanish appearance, due more to their
grotesque rags than to anything in the children them¬
selves, betrays their race even without their chatter. Be
there ever so many children of other nationalities nearer
by— the wood-gatherers are nearly all Italians. There are
still a lot of girls among them who drag as big loads as
their brothers, but since the sewing-machine found its way,
with the sweater’s mortgage, into the Italian slums also,
little Antonia has been robbed to a large extent even of
this poor freedom, and has taken her place among the
wage-earners when not on the school-bench. Once taken,
the place is hers to keep for good. Sickness, unless it be
mortal, is no excuse from the drudgery of the tenement.
When, recently, one little Italian girl, hardly yet in her
teens, stayed away from her class in the Mott Street In¬
dustrial School so long that her teacher went to her home
to look her up, she found the child in a high fever, in bed,
sewing on coats, with swollen eyes, though barely able to
sit up.

But neither poverty nor hard knocks has power to dis¬
courage the child of Italy. His nickname he pockets
with a grin that has in it no thought of the dagger and
the revenge that come to solace his after years. Only the
prospect of immediate punishment eclipses his spirits for
the moment. While the teacher of the sick little girl was
telling me her pitiful story in the Mott Street school, a
characteristic group appeared on the stairway. Three
little Italian culprits in the grasp of Nellie, the tall and
slender Irish girl who was the mentor of her class for the
day. They had been arrested “ fur fightin’ ” she briefly
explained as she dragged them by the collar toward the

22

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

principal, who just then appeared to inquire the cause of
the rumpus, and thrust them forward to receive sentence.
The three, none of whom was over eight years old, evi¬
dently felt that they were in the power of an enemy from
whom no mercy was to be expected, and made no appeal
for any. One scowled defiance. He was evidently the
injured party.

“He hit-a me a clip on de jaw,” he said in his defence,
in the dialect of Mott Street with a slight touch of “ the
Bend.” The aggressor, a heavy-browed little ruffian, hung
back with a dreary howl, knuckling his eyes with a pair of
fists that were nearly black. The third and youngest was
in a state of bewilderment that was most ludicrous. He
only knew that he had received a kick on the back and
had struck out in self-defence, when he was seized and
dragged away a prisoner. He was so dirty — school had
only just begun and there had been no time for the regu¬
lar inspection — that he was sentenced on the spot to be
taken down and washed, while the other two were led
away to the principal’s desk. All three went out howling.

I said that the Italians do not often abuse their children
downright. The padrone has had his day ; the last was
convicted seven years ago, and an end has been put to the
business of selling children into a slavery that meant
outrage, starvation, and death ; but poverty and ignorance
are fearful allies in the homes of the poor against defence¬
less childhood, even without the child-beating fiend. Two
cases which I encountered in the East Side tenements, in
the summer of 1891, show how the combination works at
its worst. Without a doubt they are typical of very many,
though I hope that few come quite up to their standard.
The one was the case of little Carmen, who last March
died in the Hew York Hospital, where she had lain five

THE ITALIAN SLUM CHILDREN

23

long months, the special care of the Society for the Pre¬
vention of Cruelty to Children. One of the summer corps
doctors found her in a Mott Street tenement, within stone-
throw of the Health Department office, suffering from a
wasting disease that could only be combated by the most
careful nursing. He put her case into the hands of the
King’s Daughters’ Committee that followed in the steps
of the doctor, and it was then that I saw her. She lay in a
little back room, up two flights and giving upon a narrow
yard where it was always twilight. The room was filthy
and close, and entirely devoid of furniture, with the ex¬
ception of a rickety stool, a slop-pail, and a rusty old stove,
one end of which was propped up with bricks. Carmen’s
bed was a board laid across the top of a barrel and a trunk
set on end. I could not describe, if I would, the condition
of the child when she was raised from the mess of straw
and rags in which she lay. The sight unnerved even the
nurse, who had seen little else than such scenes all sum¬
mer. Loathsome bedsores had attacked the wasted little
body, and in truth Carmen was more dead than alive.
But when, shocked and disgusted, we made preparations
for her removal with all speed to the hospital, the parents
objected and refused to let us take her away. They had
to be taken into court and forced to surrender the child
under warrant of law, though it was clearly the little suf¬
ferer’s only chance for life, and only the slenderest of
chances at that.

Carmen was the victim of the stubborn ignorance that
dreads the hospital and the doctor above the discomfort of
the dirt and darkness and suffering that are its every-day
attendants. Her parents were no worse than the Monroe
Street mother who refused to let the health officer vacci¬
nate her baby, because her crippled boy, with one leg an

24

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

inch shorter than the other, had “caught it” — the lame
leg, that is to say — from his vaccination. She knew it was
so, and with ignorance of that stamp there is no other
argument than force. But another element entered into
the case of a sick Essex Street baby. The tenement would
not let it recover from a bad attack of scarlet fever, and
the parents would not let it be taken to the country or to
the sea-shore, despite all efforts and entreaties. When
their motive came out at last, it proved to be a mercenary
one. They were behind with the rent, and as long as they
had a sick child in the house the landlord could not put
them out. Sick, the baby was to them a source of income,
at all events a bar to expense, and in that way so much
capital. Well, or away, it would put them at the mercy
of the rent-collector at once. So they chose to let it suf¬
fer. The parents were Jews, a fact that emphasizes the
share borne by desperate poverty in the transaction, for
the family tie is notoriously strong among their people.

No doubt Mott Street echoed with the blare of brass
bands when poor little Carmen was carried from her bed
of long suffering to her grave in Calvary. Scarce a day
passes now in these tenements that does not see some little
child, not rarely a new-born babe, carried to the grave in
solemn state, preceded by a band playing mournful dirges
and followed by a host with trailing banners, from some
wretched home that barely sheltered it alive. No suspi¬
cion of the ludicrous incongruity of the show disturbs the
paraders. It seems as if, but one remove from the dump,
an insane passion for pomp and display, perhaps a natural
reaction from the ash-barrel, lies in wait for this Italian,
to which he falls a helpless victim. Not content with
his own national and religious holidays and those he finds
awaiting him here, he has invented or introduced a

THE ITALIAN SLUM CHILDREN

25

system of liis own, a sort of communal celebration of
proprietary saints, as it were, that has taken Mulberry
Street by storm. As I understand it, the townsmen of
some Italian village, when there is a sufficient number

AN ITALIAN HOME UNDER A DUMP.

of them within reach, club together to celebrate its pa¬
tron saint, and hire a band and set up a gorgeous altar
in a convenient back yard. The fire-escapes overlooking
it are draped with flags and transformed into reserved-seat

26

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

galleries with the taste these people display under the
most adverse circumstances. Crowds come and go, parad¬
ing at intervals in gorgeous uniforms around the block.
Admission is by the saloon-door, which nearly always holds
the key to the situation, the saloonist who prompts the sud¬
den attack of devotion being frequently a namesake of the
saint and willing to go shares on the principle that he
takes the profit and the saint the glory.

The partnership lasts as long as there is any profit in
it, sometimes the better part of the week, during which
time all work stops. If the feast panned out well, the
next block is liable to be the scene of a rival celebration
before the first is fairly ended. As the supply of Italian
villages represented in New York is practically as in¬
exhaustible as that of the saloons, there is no reason why
Mulberry Street may not become a perennial picnic
ground long before the scheme to make a park of one end
of it gets under way. From the standpoint of the children
there can be no objection to this, but from that of the
police there is. They found themselves called upon to
interfere in such a four da}7s’ celebration of St. Rocco last
year, when his votaries strung cannon fire-crackers along
the street the whole length of the block and set them all
off at once. It was at just such a feast, in honor of the
same saint, that a dozen Italians were killed a week later
at Newark in the explosion of their fireworks.

It goes without saying that the children enter into this
sort of thing with all the enthusiasm of their little souls.
The politician watches it attentively, alert for some handle
to catch his new allies by and effect their “organization.”
If it is a new experience for him to find the saloon put to
such use, he betrays no surprise. It is his vantage ground,
and whether it serve as the political bait for the Irish-

THE ITALIAN SLUM CHILDREN

27

man, or as the religious initiative of the Italian, is of less
account than that its patrons, young and old, in the
end fall into his trap. Conclusive proof that the Italian
has been led into camp came to me on last St. Patrick’s
Day through the assurance of a certain popular clergy¬
man, that he had observed, on a walk through the city, a
number of hand-organs draped in green, evidently for the
occasion.

This dump of which I have spoken as furnishing the
background of the social life of Mulberry Street, has
lately challenged attention as a slum annex to the Bend,
with fresh horrors in store for defenceless childhood. To
satisfy myself upon this point I made a personal inspec¬
tion of the dumps along both rivers last winter and found
the Italian crews at work there making their home in
every instance among the refuse they picked from the
scows. The dumps are wooden bridges raised above the
level of the piers upon which they are built to allow the
discharge of the carts directly into the scows moored under
them. Under each bridge a cabin had been built of old
boards, oil-cloth, and the like, that had found its way down
on the carts ; an old milk-can had been made into a fire¬
place without the ceremony of providing stove-pipe or
draught, and here, flanked by mountains of refuse, slept
the crews of from half a dozen to three times that number
of men, secure from the police, who had grown tired of
driving them from dump to dump and had finally let them
alone. There were women at some of them, and at four
dumps, three on the North River and one on the East
Side, I found bo}Ts who ought to have been at school,
picking bones and sorting rags. They said that they
slept there, and as the men did, why should they not ? It
was their home. They wTere children of the dump, liter*

28

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

ally. All of them except one were Italians. That one
was a little homeless Jew who had drifted down at first
to pick cinders. Now that his mother was dead and his
father in a hospital, he had become a sort of fixture there,

A CHILD OF THE DUMP.

it seemed, having made the acquaintance of the other
lads.

Two boys whom I found at the West Nineteenth Street
dumps sorting bones were as bright lads as I had seen

THE ITALIAN SLUM CHILDREN

29

anywhere. One was nine years old and the other twelve.
Filthy and ragged, they fitted well into their environment
— even the pig I had encountered at one of the East River
dumps was much the more respectable, as to appearance,
of the lot — but were entirely undaunted by it. They
scarcely remembered anything but the dump. Neither
could read, of course. Further down the river I came
upon one seemingly not over fifteen, who assured me that
he was twenty-one. I thought it possible when I took a
closer look at him. The dump had stunted him. He did
not even know what a letter was. He had been there five
years, and garbage limited his mental as well as his physi¬
cal horizon.

Enough has been said to show that the lot of the poor
child of the Mulberry Street Bend, or of Little Italy, is
not a happy one, courageously and uncomplainingly, even
joyously, though it be borne. The stories of two little lads
from the region of Crosby Street always stand to me as
typical of their kind. One I knew all about from per¬
sonal observation and acquaintance ; the other I give as I
have it from his teachers in the Mott Street Industrial
School, where he was a pupil in spells. It was the death
of little Giuseppe that brought me to his home, a dismal
den in a rear tenement down i dark alnid forbidding alley.
I have seldom seen a worse place. There was no trace
there of a striving for better things — the tenement had
stamped that out — nothing but darkness and filth and
misery. From this hole Giuseppe had come to the school
a mass of rags, but with that jovial gleam in his brown
eyes that made him an instant favorite with the teachers
as well as with the boys. One of them especially, little
Mike, became attached to him, and a year after his cruel
death shed tears yet, when reminded of it. Giuseppe had

30

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

not been long at the school when he was sent to an Eliza¬
beth Street tenement for a little absentee. He brought
her, shivering in even worse rags than his own ; it was a
cold winter day.

“ This girl is very poor,” he said, presenting her to the
teacher, with a pitying look. It was only then that he
learned that she had no mother. His own had often stood
between the harsh father and him when he came home
with unsold evening papers. Giuseppe fished his only
penny out of his pocket — his capital for the afternoon’s
trade. “ I would like to give her that,” he said. After
that he brought her pennies regularly from his day’s sale,
and took many a thrashing for it. He undertook the
general supervision of the child’s education, and saw to it
that she came to school every day. Giuseppe was twelve
years old.

There came an evening when business had been very
bad, so bad that he thought a bed in the street healthier
for him than the Crosby Street alley. With three other
lads in similar straits he crawled into the iron chute that
ventilated the basement of the Post-office on the Mail
Street side and snuggled down on the grating. They
were all asleep, when fire broke out in the cellar. The
three climbed out, but Giuseppe, whose feet were wrapped
in a mail-bag, was too late. He was burned to death.

The little girl still goes to the Mott Street school. She
is too young to understand, and marvels why Giuseppe
comes no more with his pennies. Mike cries for his
friend. When, some months ago, I found myself in the
Crosby Street alley, and went up to talk to Giuseppe’s
parents, they would answer no questions before I had re¬
plied to one of theirs. It was thus interpreted to me by a
girl from the basement, who had come in out of curiosity :

THE ITALIAN SLUM CHILDREN

31

“ Are youse goin’ to give us any money ? ” Poor Giu¬
seppe !

My other little friend was Pietro, of whom I spoke be¬
fore. Perhaps of all the little life-stories of poor Italian
children I have come across in the course of years — and
they are many and sad, most of them — none comes nearer
to the hard every-day fact of those dreary tenements than
his, exceptional as was his own heavy misfortune and its
effect upon the boy. I met him first in the Mulberry
Street police-station, where he was interpreting the de¬
fence in a shooting case, having come in with the crowd
from Jersey Street, where the thing had happened at his
own door. With his rags, his dirty bare feet, and his
shock of tousled hair, he seemed to fit in so entirely there
of all places, and took so naturally to the ways of the police-
station, that he might have escaped my notice altogether
but for his maimed hand and his oddly grave yet eager
face, which no smile ever crossed despite his thirteen years.
Of both, his story, when I afterward came to know it,
gave me full explanation. He was the oldest son of a
laborer, not “ borned here ” as the rest of his sisters and
brothers. There were four of them, six in the family be¬
sides himself, as he put it : “ 2 sisters, 2 broders, 1 fader,
1 modder,” subsisting on an unsteady maximum income
of $9 a week, the rent taking always the earnings of one
week in four. The home thus dearly paid for was a
wretched room with a dark alcove for a bed-chamber, in
one of the vile old barracks that until very recently pre¬
served to Jersey Street the memory of its former bad
eminence as among the worst of the city’s slums. Pietro
had gone to the Sisters’ school, blacking boots in a hap¬
hazard sort of way in his off-hours, until the year before,
upon his mastering the alphabet, his education was con-

LEARNING TO MAKE AN ENGLIS’

THE ITALIAN SLUM CHILDREN

33

sidered to have sufficiently advanced to warrant his gradu¬
ating into the ranks of the family wage-earners, that were
sadly in need of recruiting. A steady job of “ shinin’ ”
was found for him in an Eighth Ward saloon, and that
afternoon, just before Christmas, he came home from
school and putting his books away on the shelf for the
next in order to use, ran across Broadway full of joyous
anticipation of his new dignity in an independent job.
He did not see the street-car until it was fairly upon him,
and then it was too late. They thought he was killed, but
he was only crippled for life. When, after many months,
he came out of the hospital, where the company had paid
his board and posed as doing a generous thing, his bright
smile was gone; his “shining” was at an end, and with it
his career as it had been marked out for him. Tie must
needs take up something new, and he was bending all his
energies, when I met him, towrard learning to make the
“ Englis’ letter ” with a degree of proficiency that would
justify the hope of his doing something somewhere at
sometime to make up for what he had lost. It was a far-
off possibility yet. With the same end in view, probably,
he was taking nightly writing-lessons in his mother-tongue
from one of the perambulating schoolmasters who circulate
in the Italian colony, peddling education cheap in lots to
suit. In his sober, submissive way he was content with
the prospect. It had its compensations. The boys who
used to worry him, now let him alone. “ When they see
this,” he said, holding up his scarred and misshapen arm,
“ they don’t strike me no more.” Then there was his four¬
teen months old baby brother who was beginning to walk,
and could almost “make a letter.” Pietro was much con¬
cerned about his education, anxious evidently that he
should one day take his place. “ I take him to school
3

34

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

sometime,” lie said, piloting him across the floor and talk¬
ing softly to the child in his own melodious Italian. I
watched his grave, unchanging face.

“ Pietro,” I said, with a sudden yearning to know, “ did
you ever laugh ? ”

The boy glanced from the baby to me with a wistful
look.

“ I did wonst,” he said, quietly, and went on his way.
And I would gladly have forgotten that I ever asked the
question ; even as Pietro had forgotten his laugh.

CHAPTER III.

IN THE GREAT EAST SIDE TREADMILL

IF the sightseer finds less to engage his interest in Jew-
town than in the Bend, outside of the clamoring
crowds in the Chasir — the Pig-market — he will discover
enough to enlist his sympathies, provided he did not
leave them behind when he crossed the Bowery. The loss
is his own then. There is that in the desolation of child-
life in those teeming hives to make the shrivelled heart
ache with compassion for its kind and throb with a new
life of pain, enough to dispel some prejudices that are as
old as our faith, and sometimes, I fear, a good deal stronger.
The Russian exile adds to the offence of being an alien
and a disturber of economic balances the worse one of be¬
ing a Jew. Let those who cannot forgive this damaging
fact possess their souls in patience. There is some evi¬
dence that the welcome he has received in those East Side
tenements has done more than centuries of persecution
could toward making him forget it himself.

The Italian who comes here gravitates naturally to the
oldest and most dilapidated tenements in search of cheap
rents, which he doesn’t find. The Jew has another plan,
characteristic of the man. He seeks out the biggest ones
and makes the rent come within his means by taking in
boarders, “ sweating ” his flat to the point of police inter¬
vention. That that point is a long way beyond human
decency, let alone comfort, an instance from Ludlow

36

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

Street, that came to my notice while writing this, quite
clearly demonstrates. The offender was a tailor, who lived
with his wife, two children, and two boarders in two rooms
on the top floor. [It is always the top floor ; in fifteen
years of active service as a police reporter I have had to
climb to the top floor five times for every one my busi
ness was further down, irrespective of where the tenement
was or what kind of people lived in it. Crime, suicide,
and police business generally seem to bear the same rela¬
tion to the stairs in a tenement that they bear to poverty
itself. The more stairs the more trouble. The deepest
poverty is at home in the attic.] But this tailor; with his
immediate household, including the boarders, he occupied
the larger of the two rooms. The other, a bedroom eight
feet square, he sublet to a second tailor and his wife ;
which couple, following his example as their opportnnties
allowed, divided the bedroom in two by hanging a curtain
in the middle, took one-half for themselves and let the
other half to still another tailor with a wife and child. A
midnight inspection by the sanitary police was followed
by the arrest of the housekeeper and the original tailor,
and they were fined or warned in the police-court, I for¬
get which. It doesn’t much matter. That the real point
was missed was shown by the appearance of the owner of
the house, a woman, at Sanitary Headquarters, on the day
following, with the charge against the policeman that he
was robbing her of her tenants.

The story of inhuman packing of human swarms, of
bitter poverty, of landlord greed, of sweater slavery, of
darkness and squalor and misery, which these tenements
have to tell, is equalled, I suppose, nowhere in a civilized
land. Despite the prevalence of the boarder, who is
usually a married man, come over alone the better to be

IN THE GREAT EAST SIDE TREADMILL

37

able to prepare the way for the family, the census * shows
that fifty-four per cent, of the entire population of immi¬
grant Jews were children, or under age. Every steamer has
added to their number since, and judging from the sights
one sees daily in the office of the United Hebrew Char¬
ities, and from the general appearance of Ludlow Street,
the proportion of children has suffered no decrease. Let
the reader who would know for himself what they are
like, and what their chances are, take that street some even¬
ing from Hester Street down and observe what he sees
going on there. Hot that it is the only place where he
can find them. The census I spoke of embraced forty -five
streets in the Seventh, Tenth, and Thirteenth Wards. But
at that end of Ludlow Street the tenements are taller and
the crowds always denser than anywhere else. Let him
watch the little pedlars hawking their shoe-strings, their
matches, and their penny paper-pads, with the restless en¬
ergy that seems so strangely out of proportion to the re¬
ward it reaps ; the half-grown children staggering under
heavy bundles of clothes from the sweater’s shop ; the raga¬
muffins at their fretful play, play yet, discouraged though
it be by the nasty surroundings — thank goodness, every
year brings its Passover with the scrubbing brigade to
Ludlow Street, and the dirt is shifted from the houses to
the streets once anyhow ; if it does find its way back,
something may be lost on the way — the crowding, the
pushing for elbow-room, the wails of bruised babies that
keep falling down-stairs, or rolling off the stoop, and the
raids of angry mothers swooping down upon their off¬
spring and distributing thumps right and left to pay

* The census referred to in this chapter was taken for a special pur¬
pose, by a committee of prominent Hebrews, in August, 1890, and was
very searching.

38

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

for the bruises, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
Whose eye, whose tooth, is of less account in Jewtown
than that the capital put out bears lawful interest in kind.
What kind of interest may society some day expect to
reap from Ghettos like these, where even the sunny tem¬
per of childhood is soured by want and woe, or smothered
in filth ? It is a long time since I have heard a good
honest laugh, a child’s gleeful shout, in Ludlow Street.
Angry cries, jeers, enough. They are as much part of the
place as the dirty pavements; but joyous, honest laughs,
like soap and water, are at a premium there.

But children laugh because they are happy. They are
not happy in Ludlow Street. Nobody is except the land¬
lord. Why should they be ? Born to toil and trouble,
they claim their heritage early and part with it late. There
is even less time than there is room for play in Jewtown,
good reason why the quality of the play is poor. There
is work for the weakest hands, a step for the smallest
feet in the vast tread-mill of these East Side homes. A
thing is worth there what it will bring. All other con¬
siderations, ambitions, desires, yield to that. Education
pays as an investment, and therefore the child is sent to
school. The moment his immediate value as a worker
overbalances the gain in prospect by keeping him at his
books, he goes to the shop. The testimony of Jewish ob¬
servers, who have had quite unusual opportunities for
judging, is that the average age at which these children leave
school for good is rather below twelve than beyond it, by
which time their work at home, helping their parents, has
qualified them to earn wages that will more than pay for
their keep. They are certainly on the safe side in their
reckoning, if the children are not. The legal age for shop
employment is fourteen. On my visits among the homes,

IN THE GREAT EAST SIDE TREADMILL

39

workshops, and evening schools of Jewtown, I was always
struck by the number of diminutive wage-earners who
were invariably “just fourteen.” It was clearly not the
child which the tenement had dwarfed in their case, but
the memory or the moral sense of the parents.

If, indeed, the shop were an exchange for the home ; if
the child quit the one upon entering the other, there might
be little objection to make ; but too often they are two
names for the same thing ; where they are not, the shop
is probably preferable, bad as that may be. When, in the
midnight hour, the noise of the sewing-machine was stilled
at last, I have gone the rounds of Ludlow and Hester and
Essex Streets among the poorest of the Russian Jews,
with the sanitary police, and counted often four, five, and
even six of the little ones in a single bed, sometimes a
shake-down on the hard floor, often a pile of half-finished
clothing brought home from the sweater, in the stuffy
rooms of their tenements. In one I visited very lately,
the only bed was occupied by the entire family lying length¬
wise and crosswise, literally in layers, three children at
the feet, all except a boy of ten or twelve, for whom there
was no room. He slept with his clothes on to keep him
warm, in a pile of rags just inside the door. It seemed to
me impossible that families of children could be raised at
all in such dens as I had my daily and nightly walks in.
And yet the vital statistics and all close observation agree
in allotting to these Jews even an unusual degree of good
health. The records of the Sanitary Bureau show that
while the Italians have the highest death-rate, the mortality
in the lower part of the Tenth Ward, of which Ludlow
Street is the heart and type, is the lowest in the city. Even
the baby death-rate is very low. But for the fact that the
ravages of diphtheria, croup, and measles run up the record

40

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

in the houses occupied entirely by tailors — in other words,
in the sweater district, where contagion always runs riot*
— the Tenth Ward would seem to be the healthiest spot
in the city, as well as the dirtiest and the most crowded.
The temperate habits of the Jew and his freedom from
enfeebling vices generally must account for this, along
with his marvellous vitality. I cannot now recall ever
having known a Jewish drunkard. On the other hand, I
have never come across a Prohibitionist among them.
The absence of the one renders the other superfluous.

It was only last winter I had occasion to visit repeatedly
a double tenement at the lower end of Ludlow Street,
which the police census showed to contain 297 tenants, 45
of whom were under five years of age, not counting 3
pedlars who slept in the mouldy cellar, where the water
was ankle deep on the mud floor. The feeblest ray of
daylight never found its way down there, the hatches hav¬
ing been carefully covered with rags and matting ; but
freshets often did. Sometimes the water rose to the height
of a foot, and never quite soaked away in the dryest sea-

* Dr. Roger S. Tracy’s report of the vital statistics for 1891 shows that,
while the general death-rate of the city was 25.96 per 1,000 of the popu¬
lation — that of adults (over five years) 17.13, and the baby death-rate
(under five years) 93.21— in the Italian settlement in the west half of
the Fourteenth Ward the record stood as follows : general death-rate,
33.52 ; adult death-rate, 16.29 ; and baby death-rate, 150.52. In the
Italian section of the Fourth Ward it stood : general death-rate, 34.88 ;
adult death-rate, 21.29 ; baby death-rate, 119.02. In the sweaters’ dis¬
trict in the lower part of the Tenth Ward the general death-rate was
16.23 ; the adult death rate, 7.59 ; and the baby death-rate, 61.15.
Dr. Tracy adds: “ The death-rate from phthisis was highest in houses
entirely occupied by cigarmakers (Bohemians), and lowest in those en¬
tirely occupied by tailors. On the other hand, the death-rates from
diphtheria and croup and measles were highest in houses entirely occu¬
pied by tailors.”

IN THE GREAT EAST SIDE TREADMILL 41

son. It was an awful place, and by the light of my candle
the three, with their unkempt beards and hair and sallow
faces, looked more like hideous ghosts than living men.
^ et they had slept there among and upon decaying fruit

“SLEPT IN THAT CELLAR FOUR YEARS.”

and wreckage of all sorts from the tenement for over three
years, according to their own and the housekeeper’s state¬
ments. There had been four. One was then in the hos¬
pital, but not because of any ill effect the cellar had had

42

THE CHILDREN" OF THE POOR

upon him. He had been run over in the street and was
making the most of his vacation, charging it up to the
owner of the wagon, whom he was getting ready to sue for
breaking his leg. Up-stairs, especially in the rear tene¬
ment, I found the scene from the cellar repeated with
variations. In one room a family of seven, including the
oldest daughter, a young woman of eighteen, and her
brother, a year older than she, slept in a common bed
made on the floor of the kitchen, and manifested scarcely
any concern at our appearance. A complaint to the Board
of Health resulted in an overhauling that showed the tene¬
ment to be unusually bad even for that bad spot ; but when
we came to look up its record, from the standpoint of the
vital statistics, we discovered that not only had there
not been a single death in the house during the whole
year, but on the third floor lived a woman over a hun¬
dred years old, who had been there a long time. I was
never more surprised in my life, and while we laughed at
it, I confess it came nearer to upsetting my faith in the
value of statistics than anything I had seen till then. And
yet I had met with similar experiences, if not quite so
striking, often enough to convince me that poverty and
want beget their own power to resist the evil influences of
their worst surroundings. I was at a loss how to put this
plainly to the good people who often asked wonderingly
why the children of the poor one saw in the street seemed
generally such a thriving lot, until a slip of Mrs. Parting¬
ton’s discriminating tongue did it for me: “Manured to
the soil.” That is it. In so far as it does not merely seem
so — one does not see the sick and suffering — that puts it
right.

Whatever the effect upon the physical health of the
children, it cannot be otherwise, of course, than that such

IN THE GREAT EAST SIDE TREADMILL

43

conditions should corrupt their morals. I have the author¬
ity of a distinguished rabbi, whose field and daily walk
are among the poorest of his people, to support me in the
statement that the moral tone of the young girls is distinct¬
ly lower than it was. The entire absence of privacy in
their homes and the foul contact of the sweaters’ shops,
where men and women work side by side from morning
till night, scarcely half clad in the hot summer weather,
does for the girls what the street completes in the boy.
But for the patriarchal family life of the Jew that is his
strongest virture, their ruin would long since have been
complete. It is that which pilots him safely through
shoals upon which the Gentile would have been inevitably
wrecked. It is that which keeps the almshouse from cast¬
ing its shadow over Ludlow Street to add to its gloom. It
is the one quality which redeems, and on the Sabbath eve
when he gathers his household about his board, scant
though the fare be, dignifies the darkest slum of Jewtown.

How strong is this attachment to home and kindred that
makes the Jew cling to the humblest hearth and gather
his children and his children’s children about it, though
grinding poverty leave them only a bare crust to share, I
saw in the case of little Jette Brodsky, who strayed away
from her own door, looking for her papa. They were
strangers and ignorant and poor, so that weeks went by
before they could make their loss known and get a hearing,
and meanwhile Jette, who had been picked up and taken
to Police Headquarters, had been hidden away in an asy¬
lum, given another name when nobody came to claim her,
and had been quite forgotten. But in the two years that
passed before she was found at last, her empty chair stood
ever by her father’s, at the family board, and no Sabbath
eve but heard his prayer for the restoration of their lost

44

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

one. It happened once that I came in on a Friday evening
at the breaking of bread, just as the four candles upon the
table had been lit with the Sabbath blessing upon the
home and all it sheltered. Their light fell on little else
than empty plates and anxious faces ; but in the patriarchal
host who arose and bade the guest welcome with a dignity
a king might have envied I recognized with difficulty
the humble pedlar I had known only from the street and
from the police office, where he hardly ventured beyond
the door.

But the tenement that has power to turn purest gold
to dross digs a pit for the Jew even through this virtue
that has been his shield against its power for evil. In its
atmosphere it turns too often to a curse by helping to
crowd his lodgings, already overflowing, beyond the point
of official forbearance. Then follow orders to “ reduce ”
the number of tenants that mean increased rent, which the
family cannot pay, or the breaking up of the home. An
appeal to avert such a calamity came to the Board of Health
recently from one of the refugee tenements. The tenant
was a man with a houseful of children, too full for the
official scale as applied to the flat, and his plea was backed
by the influence of his only friend in need — the family
undertaker. There was something so cruelly suggestive
in the idea that the laugh it raised died without an echo.

The census of the sweaters’ district gave a total of 23,-
405 children under six years, and 21,285 between six and
fourteen, in a population of something over a hundred and
eleven thousand Russian, Polish, and Roumanian Jews in
the three wards mentioned ; 15,567 are set down as “ chil¬
dren over fourteen.” According to the record, scarce one-
third of the heads of families had become naturalized
citizens, though the average of their stay in the United

IN THE GREAT EAST SIDE TREADMILL

45

States was between nine and ten years. The very lan¬
guage of our country was to them a strange tongue, under¬
stood and spoken by only 15,837 of the fifty thousand and
odd adults enumerated. Seven thousand of the rest spoke
only German, five thousand Russian, and over twenty-one
thousand could only make themselves understood to each
other, never to the world around them, in the strange
jargon that passes for Hebrew on the East Side, but is
really a mixture of a dozen known dialects and tongues
and of some that were never known or heard anywhere
else. In the census it is down as just what it is — jargon,
and nothing else.

Here, then, are conditions as unfavorable to the satisfac¬
tory, even safe, development of child life in the chief
American city as could well be imagined ; more unfavor¬
able even than with the Bohemians, who have at least
their faith in common with us, if safety lies in the merg¬
ing through the rising generation of the discordant ele¬
ments into a common harmony. A community set apart,
set sharply against the rest in every clashing interest, social
and industrial ; foreign in language, in faith, and in tradi¬
tion ; repaying dislike with distrust ; expanding under the
new relief from oppression in the unpopular qualities of
greed and contentiousness fostered by ages of tyranny un¬
resistingly borne. Clearly, if ever there was need of
moulding any material for the citizenship that awaits it,
it is with this ; and if ever trouble might be expected to
beset the effort, it might be looked for here. But it is not
so. The record shows that of the sixty thousand children,
including the fifteen thousand young men and women over
fourteen who earn a large share of the money that pays for
rent and food, and the twenty-three thousand toddlers un¬
der six years, fully one-third go to school. Deducting the

SYNAGOGUE SCHOOL IN A HESTER STREET TENEMENT.

IN THE GREAT EAST SIDE TREADMILL

47

two extremes, little more than a thousand children of be¬
tween six and fourteen years, that is, of school age, were
put down as receiving no instruction at the time the cen¬
sus was taken ; but it is not at all likely that this condition
was permanent in the case of the greater number of these.
The poorest Hebrew knows — the poorer he is, the better
he knows it — that knowledge is power, and power as the
means of getting on in the world that has spurned him
so long is what his soul yearns for. He lets no op¬
portunity slip to obtain it. Day and night schools are
crowded by his children, who are everywhere forging
ahead of their Christian school-fellows, taking more than
their share of prizes and promotions. Every synagogue,
every second rear tenement or dark back yard, has its
school and its school-master with his scourge to intercept
those who might otherwise escape. In the census there
are put down 251 Jewish teachers as living in these
tenements, a large number of whom conduct such schools,
so that, as the children form always more than one-half
of the population in the Jewish quarter, the evidence is
after all that even here, with the tremendous inpour of
a destitute, ignorant people, and with the undoubted em¬
ployment of child labor on a large scale, the cause of pro¬
gress along the safe line is holding its own.

It is true that these tenement schools that absorb several
thousand children are not what they might be from a
sanitary point of view. It is also true that heretofore
nothing but Hebrew and the Talmud have been taught
there. But to the one evil the health authorities have
recently been aroused ; of the other, the wise and patriotic
men who are managing the Baron de Hirscli charity are
making a useful handle by gathering the teachers in and
setting them to lean) English. Their new knowledge will

48

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

soon be reflected in their teaching, and the Hebrew schools
become primary classes in the system of public education.
The school in a Hester Street tenement that is shown in
the picture is a fair specimen of its kind — by no means

one of the worst —
and so is the back
yard behind it, that
serves as the chil¬
dren’s play-ground,
with its dirty mud-
puddles, its slop-
barrels and broken
flags, and its foul
tenement- house sur¬
roundings. Both fall
in well with the
home-lives and en¬
vironment of the un¬
happy little wretches
whose daily horizon
they limit. They get
there the first in¬
struction they re¬
ceive in the only
tongues with which
the teachers are fa¬
miliar, Hebrew and
/T^_ . . ov .. „ . the Jargon, m the

(Entrance to a Talmud School in Hester Street.) °

only studies which
they are competent to teach, the Talmud and the Proph¬
ets. Until they are six years old they are under the
“ Melammed’s ” rod all da}7 ; after that only in the in¬
terval between public school and supper. It is practi-

IN THE GREAT EAST SIDE TREADMILL

49

cally the only religious instruction the poorest Jewish
children receive, but it is claimed by some of their rab¬
bis that they had better have none at all. The daily
transition, they say, from the bright and, by comparison,
aesthetically beautiful public school-room to these dark and
inhospitable dens, with which the faith that has brought
so many miseries upon their race comes to be inseparably
associated in the child’s mind as he grows up, tends to re¬
flections that breed indifference, if not infidelity, in the
young. It would not be strange if this were so. If the
schools, through this process, also help pave the way for
the acceptance of the Messiah heretofore rejected, which I
greatly doubt, it may be said to be the only instance in
which the East Side tenement has done its tenants a good
Christian turn.

There is no more remarkable class in any school than
that of these Melammedim,* that may be seen in session
any week-day forenoon, save on Saturday, of course, in
the Hebrew Institute in East Broadway. Old bearded
men struggling through the intricacies of the first reader,
“ a cow, a cat,” and all the rest of childish learning, with
a rapt attention and a concentration of energy as if they
were devoting themselves to the most heroic of tasks,
which, indeed, they are, for the good that may come
of it cannot easily be overestimated. As an educational
measure it may be said to be getting down to first prin¬
ciples with a vengeance. When the reader has been
mastered, brief courses in the history of the United States,
the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution fol¬
low. The test of proficiency in the pupil is his ability
to translate the books of the Old Testament, with which
he is familiar, of course, from Hebrew into English, and
* Meaning “teachers.”

4

50

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

vice versa. The Melammed is rarely a dull scholar. Ko
one knows better than he, to whom it has come only in the
evening of his hard life, the value of the boon that is of¬
fered him. One of the odd group that was deep in the

CLASS OP MELAMMEDIM LEARNING ENGLISH.

lesson of the day had five children at home, whom he
had struggled to bring up on an income of ten dollars a
week. The oldest, a bright boy who had graduated with
honor, despite the patch on his trousers, from the public
school, was ambitious to go to college, and the father had

IN THE GREAT EAST SIDE TREADMILL

51

saved and pinched in a thousand ways to gratify his desire.
One of the managers of the Institute who knew how the
family were starving on half rations, had offered the
father, a short time before, to get the boy employment in
a store at three dollars a week. It was a tremendous
temptation, for the money was badly needed at home.
But the old man put it resolutely away from him. “ Ko,”
he said, “ I must send him to college. He shall have the
chance that was denied his father.” And he was as good
as his word. And so was the lad, a worthy son of a worthy
father. When I met him he had already proved himself
a long way the best student in his class.

In other class-rooms in the great building, which is de¬
voted entirely to the cause of Americanizing the young
Russian immigrants, hundreds of children get daily their
first lessons in English and in patriotism in simultaneous
doses. The two are inseparable in the beneficent plan of
their instructors. Their effort is to lay hold of the chil¬
dren of the new-comers at once; tender years are no bar¬
rier. For the toddlers there are kindergarten classes, with
play the street has had no chance to soil. And while
playing they learn to speak the strange new tongue and
to love the pretty flag with the stars that is everywhere
in sight. The night school gathers in as many as can be
corralled of those who are big enough, if not old enough,
to work. The ease and rapidity with which they learn is
equalled only by their good behavior and close attention
while in school. There is no whispering and no rioting
at these desks, no trial of strength with the teacher, as in
the Italian ragged schools, where the question who is boss
has always to be settled before the business of the school
can proceed. These children come to learn. Even from
the Christian schools in the district that gather in their

52

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

share comes the same testimony. All the disturbance
they report was made by their elders, outside the school,
in the street. In the Hebrew Institute the average of ab¬
sence for all causes was, during the first year, less than eight
per cent, of the registered attendance, and in nearly every
case sickness furnished a valid excuse. In a year and a
half the principal had only been called upon three times
to reprove an obstreperous pupil, in a total of 1,500.
While I was visiting one of the day classes a little girl
who had come from Moscow only two months before pre¬
sented herself with her green vaccination card from the
steamer. She understood already perfectly the questions
put to her and was able to answer most of them in Eng
lish. Boys of eight and nine years who had come over as
many months before, knowing only the jargon of their na¬
tive village, read to me whole pages from the reader with
almost perfect accent, and did sums on the blackboard that
would have done credit to the average boy of twelve in
our public schools. Figuring is always their strong point.
They would not be Jews if it was not.

In the evening classes the girls of “fourteen” flourished,
as everywhere in Jewtown. There were many who were
much older, and some who were a long way yet from
that safe goal. One sober-faced little girl, who wore a
medal for faithful attendance and who could not have
been much over ten, if as old as that, said that she “ went
out dressmaking” and so helped her mother. Another,
who was even smaller and had been here just three
weeks, yet understood what was said to her, explained
in broken German that she was learning to work at
“Blumen” in a Grand Street shop, and would soon be
able to earn wages that would help support the family of
four children, of whom she was the oldest. The girl who

IN THE GREAT EAST SIDE TREADMILL

53

sat in the seat with her was from a Hester Street tene¬
ment. Her clothes showed that she was very poor. She
read very fluently on demand a story about a big dog that
tried to run away, or something, “ when he had a chance.”
When she came to translate what she had read into
German, which many of the Russian children understand,
she got along until she reached the word “ chance.”
There she stopped, bewildered. It was the one idea of
which her brief life had no embodiment, the thing it had
altogether missed.

The Declaration of Independence half the children
knew by heart before they had gone over it twice. To
help them along it is printed in the school - books with
a Hebrew translation and another in Jargon, a “ Jew-
ish-German,” in parallel columns and the explanatory
notes in Hebrew. The Constitution of the United States
is treated in the same manner, but it is too hard, or too
wearisome, for the children. They “hate” it, says the
teacher, while the Declaration of Independence takes their
fancy at sight. They understand it in their own practi¬
cal way, and the spirit of the immortal document suffers
no loss from the annotations of Ludlow Street, if its dig¬
nity is sometimes slightly rumpled.

“ When,” said the teacher to one of the pupils, a little
working-girl from an Essex Street sweater’s shop, “ the
Americans could no longer put up with the abuse of the
English who governed the colonies, what occurred then ? ”

“A strike!” responded the girl, promptly. She had
found it here on coming and evidently thought it a na¬
tional institution upon which the whole scheme of our
government was founded.

54

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, ,im

A DECLARATION BY THE REPRESENTATIVES
OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

IN CONGRESS ASSEMBLED.

rosnsn d itca run ^
cnD'csn man
•onaipa

ENGLISH.

HEBREW.

When, in the course of human
events, it becomes necessary for one
people to dissolve the political bands
which have connected them with an¬
other, and to assume, among the pow¬
ers of the earth, the separate and equal
station to which the laws of nature
and of nature’s God entitle them, a
decent respect to the opinions of man¬
kind requires that they should declare
the causes which impel them to the
separation.

We hold these truths to be self-
evident — that all men are created
equal ; that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain inalienable rights ;
that among these are life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness. That, to
secure these rights, governments are
instituted among men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the
governed ; that, whenever any form
of government becomes destructive
of these ends, it is the right of the

,D"isn nmp ni^nsifn
nr6 pnA ny '22 issd' ds
nuHDn nriDio ns \>nb
.ins djA nms vnnp
'ths TinD ,mmy nvr6
mvD avoa ,i>ann ubmo
mpm 'sb id? itys
rurbyatan \“6s 'pm yaton
'22 niyni> "naan mi
ns ymni> oa"nD msn
.mnan^ annans? niTon

onannty urns D'roso
ranx ays n^sn dtpds,"i
mucns'oa fop— n'sn
D-ravoipa-iPi ,nns afoa
,a5«y ppi? nwrr nvar
nnn ,D"n an £foai
by ; dips npmi
tibwcD now r6sn nvarn
\nb sa naro nym ,psa
aps aasn '22 '22 jin a
ny ^aai ; anfor
n^np' nfocm no aps
,nsrn nfonn ns nai
oyn '22'i'2 nipan vi

IN THE GREAT EAST SIDE TREADMILL

55

“o:yi:V£V~o'x )$Brn,u^pin » .PlHJ?n

prtMKO jjnjnojn ijn unj&pu? jwk
D^K WtSKKEW JNSrr'tnilD yi 1KB WOTEfi

I’K ^VOKnjJD |jnNll KM

.DjnuKp _

JEWISH-GERMAN.

HEBREW.

p^ap'x yD'jr'fcny nyn spfnyD px |jm
yt^B^xa xh lyry^xaix Bjrwa j’Byj tb
d'd Ba^pnxa x"T|yaxn ya!>yn nynjya
xn fyDny:*iX2X uix ,pi>$D pyux jy2"x
22i5^yt2ty yrr^i n2ix ynjyBPBDa^y?
nyn jy^myn yiPDayoD $nj xh lyanrc
-nynyn *m x"t ana"^ nya^yvi ix ,B$>ytt
n:ix nit2X2 x-n ;xa pay Tya Dxn tan^ tarta
an BMxSnya xt ,1212x2 jxa ytayrya dxi

X"T DXn ,|yaoyt2 jXD 2212"» XH IX 221t23X

jyaxn ya^yvi fyaxmx yn jyay^x }y^r
jauynta nyn ix jy^Jixvixy: xh

ynnxii yn |xp nya"p Dxn jyanb yii
-ayn y5£x cxn — ipmarax lyxtaxnaria
nyeayrya nyn Dxn ,;ynxay:i -p^1 nan iyey
-nya jytaayn yaynx yDDHya b*» xh taxn
■"id ,jyay^ :|jnynyi yn ixnaix ,ddx^
sp? "ix i'i?p^2 iyaynia&? Dxn na^x ,tan
pcnix nan pyan ax ytaayn ym dix Dxn
ya^yvi ta^ytatyyjax jyaawayn nyp^ya xh
}xd taaxnp naax taax» ynrrx |ytai>xnny
ym dxi ; jynmyn xh ya^yaa ^-ix p^a ;yn
aavrayn nyn fyaaabnaxn ya!>yaa naya- i\x
taxn ,pma jynxa> jyxtaxnaana yn ;y^xvi
pynay \)i yJpyvi ,taayn oxn p^xa dxi

nuano vn nnon 'jb^
nny naapnan ra^aax
nnn -man naxnxi>
naano : naaaty naanan
,6x'xn ix pnaxna) “jten
(nytanx^ta) main niano
-na$na) D'aanx naanna
.(-iXDy

naacmn a\n “jtan naano
nnatnn nnn aanann ntyx
nainata ^ rranan
ar^na |iT^y,i ,mt2na
“i ynw ipnvi2 ,T^BDm3
nr^nxp MTi'nnni /r
n'onini n'^axn
•Tn^m

nnn vn niarn ni2HD
nvar |ni?i mafen nrn^n
“xd utym p^y ,nnnvo
t2,ip't2py2xp ,Dt2yntyt2XD
."0&6"X“i$ro

56

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

It was curious to find the low voices of the children,
particularly the girls, an impediment to instruction in this
school. They could sometimes hardly be heard for the
noise in the street, when the heat made it necessary to
have the windows open. But shrillness is not character¬
istic even of the Pig-market when it is noisiest and most
crowded. Some of the children had sweet singing voices.
One especially, a boy with straight red hair and a freckled
face, chanted in a plaintive minor key the One Hundred
and Thirtieth Psalm, “ Out of the depths ” etc., and the
harsh gutturals of the Hebrew became sweet harmony until
the sad strain brought tears to our eyes.

The dirt of Ludlow Street is all-pervading and the chil¬
dren do not escape it. Rather, it seems to have a special
affinity for them, or they for the dirt. The duty of im¬
parting the fundamental lesson of cleanliness devolves
upon a special school officer, a matron, who makes the
round of the classes every morning with her alphabet : a
cake of soap, a sponge, and a pitcher of water, and picks
out those who need to be washed. One little fellow ex¬
pressed his disapproval of this programme in the first Eng¬
lish composition he wrote, as follows :

S'VUcLl'OL'VLAs.

S'yocLoa*‘VL4s cLo-' v^o-t

v&L, J lO~CUls CU StfscLtcUUs.

'to-'

to^cjbeA*. S

VJ~

Despite this hint, the lesson is enforced upon the chil¬
dren, but there is no evidence that it bears fruit in their
homes to any noticeable extent, as is the case with the Ital¬
ians I spoke of. The homes are too hopeless, the grind

IN THE GREAT EAST SIDE TREADMILL

57

too unceasing. The managers know it and have little
hope of the older immigrants. It is toward getting hold of
their children that they bend every effort, and with a suc¬
cess that shows how easily these children can he moulded
for good or for bad. Nor do they let go their grasp of
them until the job is finished. The United Hebrew Char¬
ities maintain trade-schools for those who show aptness for
such work, and a very creditable showing they make. The
public school receives all those who graduate from what
might be called the American primary in East Broadway.

The smoky torches on many hucksters’ carts threw their
uncertain yellow light over Hester Street as I watched the
children troop homeward from school one night. Eight
little pedlers hawking their wares had stopped under the
lamp on the corner to bargain with each other for want of
cash customers. They were engaged in a desperate but
vain attempt to cheat one of their number who was deaf
and dumb. I bought a quire of note-paper of the mute
for a cent and instantly the whole crew beset me in a fierce
rivalry, to which I put a hasty end by buying out the little
mute’s poor stock — ten cents covered it all — and after he
had counted out the quires, gave it back to him. At this
act of unheard-of generosity the seven, who had remained to
witness the transfer, stood speechless. As I went my way,
with a sudden common impulse they kissed their hands at
me, all rivalry forgotten in their admiration, and kept kiss¬
ing, bowing, and salaaming until I was out of sight. “ Not
bad children,” I mused as I went along, “good stuff in them,
whatever their faults.” I thought of the poor boy’s stock,
of the cheapness of it, and then it occurred to me that he
had charged me just twice as much for the paper I gave him
back as for the penny quire I bought. But when I went
back to give him a piece of my mind the boys were gone.

CHAPTER IV.

TONY AND HIS TRIBE

I HAVE a little friend somewhere in Mott Street whose
picture comes up before me. I wish I could show it
to the reader, but to photograph Tony is one of the un¬
attained ambitions of my life. He is one of the whimsi¬
cal birds one sees when he hasn’t got a gun, and then
never long enough in one place to give one a chance to get
it. A ragged coat three sizes at least too large for the
boy, though it has evidently been cropped to meet his
case, hitched by its one button across a bare brown breast ;
one sleeve patched on the under side with a piece of sole-
leather that sticks out straight, refusing to be reconciled ;
trousers that boasted a seat once, but probably not while
Tony has worn them ; two left boots tied on with packing
twine, bare legs in them the color of the leather, heel and
toe showing through ; a shock of sunburnt hair struggling
through the rent in the old straw hat ; two frank, laugh¬
ing eyes under its broken brim — that is Tony.

He stood over the gutter the day I met him, reaching
for a handful of mud with which to “ paste ” another
hoodlum who was shouting defiance from across the street.
He did not see me, and when my hand touched his
shoulder his whole little body shrank with a convulsive
shudder, as from an expected blow. Quick as a flash he
dodged, and turning, out of reach, confronted the unknown
enemy, gripping tight his handful of mud. I had a bunch

TONY AND HIS TRIBE

59

of white pinks which a young lady had given me half an
hour before for one of my little friends. “ They are
yours,” I said, and held them out to him, “take them.”

Doubt, delight, and utter bewilderment struggled in the
boy’s face. He said not one word, but when he had brought
his mind to believe that it really was so, clutched the
flowers with one eager, grimy fist, held them close against
his bare breast, and, shielding them with the other, ran as
fast as his legs could carry him down the street. Not far ;
fifty feet away he stopped short, looked back, hesitated a
moment, then turned on his track as fast as he had come.
He brought up directly in front of me, a picture a painter
would have loved, ragamuffin that he was, with the flowers
held so tightly against his brown skin, scraped out with
one foot and made one of the funniest little bows.

“ Thank you,” he said. Then he was off. Down the
street I saw squads of children like himself running out
to meet him. He darted past and through them all,
never stopping, but pointing back my way, and in a min¬
ute there bore down upon me a crowd of little ones, run¬
ning breathless with desperate entreaty : “ Oh, mister !

give me a flower.” Hot tears of grief and envy — human
passions are much the same in rags and in silks — fell when
they saw I had no more. But by that time Tony was
safe.

And where did he run so fast? For whom did he
shield the “ posy ” so eagerly, so faithfully, that ragged
little wretch that was all mud and patches ? I found out
afterward when I met him givino; liis sister a ride in a dis-
mantled tomato-crate, likely enough “ hooked ” at the
grocer’s. It was for his mother. In the dark hovel he
called home, to the level of which all it sheltered had long
since sunk through the brutal indifference of a drunken

60

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

father, my lady’s pinks blossomed, and, long after they were
withered and yellow, still stood in their cracked jar, vis¬
ible token of something that had entered Tony’s life and
tenement with sweetening touch that day for the first
time. Alas ! for the last, too, perhaps. I saw Tony off
and on for a while and then he was as suddenly lost as he
was found, with all that belonged to him. Moved away —
put out, probably — and, except the assurance that they
were still somewhere in Mott Street, even the saloon could
give me no clue to them.

I gained Tony’s confidence, almost, in the time I knew
him. There was a little misunderstanding between us
that had still left a trace of embarrassment when Tony
disappeared. It was when I asked him one day, while we
were not yet “ solid,” if he ever went to school. He said
“ sometimes,” and backed off. I am afraid Tony lied
that time. The evidence was against him. It was differ¬
ent with little Katie, my nine-year-old housekeeper of
the sober look. Her I met in the Fifty-second Street In¬
dustrial School, where she picked up such crumbs of learn¬
ing as were for her in the intervals of her housework.
The serious responsibilities of life had come early to Katie.
On the top floor of a tenement in West Forty-ninth Street
she was keeping house for her older sister and two
brothers, all of whom worked in the hammock factory,
earning from $4.50 to $1.50 a week. They had moved
together when their mother died and the father brought
home another wife. Their combined income was some¬
thing like $9.50 a week, and the simple furniture was
bought on instalments. But it was all clean, if poor.
Katie did the cleaning and the cooking of the plain kind.
They did not run much to fancy cooking, I guess. She
scrubbed and swept and went to school, all as a matter of

TONY AND HIS TRIBE

61

course, and ran the house generally, with an occasional
lift from the neighbors in the tenement, who were, if
anything, poorer than they. The picture shows what a
sober, patient, sturdy little thing she was, with that dull
life wearing on her day
by day. At the school
they loved her for her
quiet, gentle ways. She
got right up when asked
and stood for her picture
without a question and
without a smile.

“ What kind of work
do you do?” I asked,
thinking to interest her
while I made ready.

“I scrubs,” she replied,
promptly, and her look
guaranteed that what she
scrubbed came out clean.

Katie was one of the
little mothers whose
work never ends. Very
early the cross of her sex
had been laid upon the
little shoulders that bore
it so stoutly. Tony’s, as
likely as not, would never
begin. There were ear¬
marks upon the boy that warranted the suspicion. They
were the ear-marks of the street to which his care and
education had been left. The only work of which it
heartily approves is that done by other people. I came

I SCRUBS.”— KATIE, WHO KEEPS HOUSE IN
WEST FORTY-NINTH STREET.

62

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

upon Tony once under circumstances that foreshadowed
his career with tolerable distinctness. He was at the
head of a gang of little shavers like himself, none over
eight or nine, who were swaggering around in a ring, in
the middle of the street, rigged out in war-paint and hen-
feathers, shouting as they went: “ Whoop ! We are the
Houston Streeters.” They meant no harm and they were
not doing any just then. It was all in the future, but it
was there, and no mistake. The game which they were
then rehearsing was one in which the policeman who stood
idly swinging his club on the corner would one day take
a hand, and not always the winning one.

The fortunes of Tony and Katie, simple and soon told
as they are, encompass as between the covers of a book
the whole story of the children of the poor, the story
of the bad their lives struggle vainly to conquer, and the
story of the good that crops out in spite of it. Sickness,
that always finds the poor unprepared and soon leaves
them the choice of beggary or starvation, hard times,
the death of the bread-winner, or the part played by the
growler in the poverty of the home, may vary the
theme for the elders ; for the children it is the same sad
story, with little variation, and that rarely of a kind to im¬
prove. Happily for their peace of mind, they are the
least concerned about it. In New York, at least, the poor
children are not the stunted repining lot we have heard
of as being hatched in cities abroad. Stunted in body
perhaps. It was said of Napoleon that he shortened the
average stature of the Frenchman one inch by getting all
the tall men killed in his wars. The tenement has done
that for New York. Only the other day one of the best
known clergymen in the city, who tries to attract the boys
to his church on the East Side by a very practical interest

TONY AND HIS TRIBE

63

in them, and succeeds admirably in doing it, told me that
the drill-master of his cadet corps was in despair because
he could barely find two or three among half a hun¬
dred lads verging on manhood, over five feet six inches
high. It is queer what different ways there are of look¬
ing at a thing. My medical friend finds in the fact that
poverty stunts the body what he is pleased to call a beau¬
tiful provision of nature to prevent unnecessary suffering :
there is less for the poverty to pinch then. It is self-de¬
fence, he says, and he claims that the consensus of learned
professional opinion is with him. Yet, when this shortened
sufferer steals a loaf of bread to make the pinching bear
less hard on what is left, he is called a thief, thrown into
jail, and frowned upon by the community that just now
saw in his case a beautiful illustration of the operation of
natural laws for the defence of the man.

Stunted morally, yes ! It could not well be otherwise.
But stunted in spirits — never ! As for repining, there is
no such word in his vocabulary. He accepts life as it
comes to him and gets out of it what he can. If that is
not much, he is not justly to blame for not giving back
more to the community of which by and by he will be a
responsible member. The kind of the soil determines the
quality of the crop. The tenement is his soil and it per¬
vades and shapes his young life. It is the tenement that
gives up the child to the street in tender years to find
there the home it denied him. Its exorbitant rents rob
him of the schooling that is his one chance to elude its
grasp, by compelling his enrolment in the army of wage-
earners before he has learned to read. Its alliance with
the saloon guides his baby feet along the well-beaten
track of the growler that completes his ruin. Its pow¬
er to pervert and corrupt has always to be considered,

04

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

its point of view always to be taken to get the perspective
in dealing with the poor, or the cart will seem to be for¬
ever getting before the horse in a way not to be under¬
stood. We had a girl once at our house in the country
who left us suddenly after a brief stay and went back to
her old tenement life, because “ all the green hurt her eyes
so.” She meant just what she said, though she did not
know herself what ailed her. It was the slum that had
its fatal grip upon her. She longed for its noise, its
bustle, and its crowds, and laid it all to the green grass
and the trees that were new to her as steady company.

From this tenement the street offered, until the kinder¬
garten came not long ago, the one escape, does yet for the
great mass of children — a Hobson’s choice, for it is hard to
say which is the most corrupting. The opportunities
rampant in the one are a sad commentary on the sure de¬
filement of the other. What could be expected of a
standard of decency like this one, of a household of

tenants who assured me that Mrs. M - , at that moment

under arrest for half clubbing her husband to death, was
“ a very good, a very decent, woman indeed, and if she did
get full, he (the husband) was not much.” Or of the
rule of good conduct laid down by a young girl, found
beaten and senseless in the street up in the Annexed Dis¬
trict last autumn : “ Them was two of the fellers from
Frog Hollow,” she said, resentfully, when I asked who
struck her ; “ them toughs don’t know how to behave
theirselves when they see a lady in liquor.”

Hers was the standard of the street, the other’s that of
the tenement. Together they stamp the child’s life with
the vicious touch which is sometimes only the caricature
of the virtues of a better soil. Under the rough burr lie un¬
developed qualities of good and of usefulness, rather,

TONY AND HIS TRIBE

65

perhaps, of the capacity for them, that crop out in constant
exhibitions of loyalty, of gratitude, and true-heartedness, a
never-ending source of encouragement and delight to those
who have made their cause their own and have in their
true sympathy the key to the best that is in the children.
The testimony of a teacher for twenty-five years in one of
the ragged schools, who has seen the shanty neighborhood
that surrounded her at the start give place to mile- long
rows of big tenements, leaves no room for doubt as to the
influence the change has had upon the children. With the
disappearance of the shanties — homesteads in effect, how¬
ever humble — and the coming of the tenement crowds,
there has been a distinct descent in the scale of refinement
among the children, if one may use the term. The
crowds and the loss of home privacy, with the increased
importance of the street as a factor, account for it. The
general tone has been lowered, while at the same time, by
reason of the greater rescue-efforts put forward, the original
amount of ignorance has been reduced. The big loafer of
the old day, who could neither read nor write, has been
eliminated to a large extent, and his loss is our gain. The
tough who has taken his place is able at least to spell his
way through “ The Bandits’ Cave,” the pattern exploits of
Jesse James and his band, and the newspaper accounts of
the latest raid in which he had a hand. Perhaps that
explains why he is more dangerous than the old loafer.
The transition period is always critical, and a little learn¬
ing is proverbially a dangerous thing. It may be that in
the day to come, when we shall have got the grip of our
compulsory school law in good earnest, there will be an
educational standard even for the tough, by which time he
will, I think, have ceased to exist from sheer disgust, if
for no other reason. At present he is in no immediate
5

66

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

danger of extinction from sucli a source. It is not how
much book-learning the boy can get, but how little he can
get along with, and that is very little indeed. He knows
how to make a little go a long way, however, and to serve
on occasion a very practical purpose ; as, for instance, when
I read recently on the wall of the church next to my office
in Mulberry Street this observation, chalked in an awk¬
ward hand half the length of the wall : “ Mary McGee is
engagd to the feller in the alley.” Quite apt, I should
think, to make Mary show her colors and to provoke the
fight with the rival “ feller ” for which the writer was
evidently spoiling. I shall get back, farther on, to the
question of the children’s schooling. It is so beset by lies
ordinarily as to be seldom answered as promptly and as
honestly as in the case of a little fellow whom I found in
front of St. George’s Church, engaged in the aesthetic oc¬
cupation of pelting the Friends’ Seminary across the way
with mud. There were two of them, and when I asked
them the question that estranged Tony, the wicked one
dug his fists deep down in the pockets of his blue-jeans
trousers and shook his head gloomily. He couldn’t read ;
didn’t know how ; never did.

“ He? ” said the other, who could, “ he ? He don’t learn
nothing. He throws stones.” The wicked one nodded.
It was the extent of his education.

But if the three B’s suffer neglect among the children of
the poor, their lessons in the three D’s — Dirt, Discomfort,
and Disease — that form the striking features of their en¬
vironment, are early and thorough enough. The two lat¬
ter, at least, are synonymous terms, if dirt and discomfort
are not. Any dispensary doctor knows of scores of cases
of ulceration of the eye that are due to the frequent rub¬
bing of dirty faces with dirty little hands. Worse filth

TONY AND HIS TRIBE

67

diseases than that find a fertile soil in the tenements, as
the health officers learn when typhus and small-pox break
out. It is not the desperate diet of ignorant mothers, who
feed their month-old babies with sausage, beer, and Lim-
burger cheese, that alone accounts for the great infant
mortality among the poor in the tenements. The dirt
and the darkness in their homes contribute their full share,
and the landlord is more to blame than the mother. He
holds the key to the situation which her ignorance fails to
grasp, and it is he who is responsible for much of the un¬
founded and unnecessary prejudice against foreigners, who
come here willing enough to fall in with the ways of the
country that are shown to them. The way he shows them
is not the way of decency. I am convinced that the really
injurious foreigners in this community, outside of the
walking delegate’s tribe, are the foreign landlords of two
kinds : those who, born in poverty abroad, have come up
through tenement-house life to the ownership of tene¬
ment property, with all the bad traditions of such a career ;
and the absentee landlords of native birth who live and
spend their rents away from home, without knowing or
caring what the condition of their property is, so the in¬
come from it suffer no diminution. There are honorable
exceptions to the first class, but few enough to the latter
to make them hardly worth mentioning.

To a good many of the children, or rather to their
parents, this latter statement and the experience that war¬
rants it must have a sadly familiar sound. The Irish
element is still an important factor in New York’s tene¬
ments, though it is yielding one stronghold after another
to the Italian foe. It lost its grip on the Five Points and
the Bend long ago, and at this writing the time seems
not far distant when it must vacate for good also that

68

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

classic ground of the Kerryman, Cherry Hill. It is Irish
only by descent, however ; the children are Americans, as
they will not fail to convince the doubter. A school cen¬
sus of this district, the Fourth Ward, taken last winter, dis¬
covered 2,016 children between the ages of five and four¬
teen years. No less than 1,706 of them were put down
as native born, but only one-fourth, or 519, had American
parents. Of the others 572 had Irish and 536 Italian
parents. Uptown, in many of the poor tenement locali¬
ties, in Poverty Gap, in Battle Bow, and in Hell’s
Kitchen, in short, wherever the gang flourishes, the Celt
is still supreme and seasons the lump enough to give it
his own peculiar flavor, easily discovered through its “ na¬
tive ” guise in the story of the children of the poor.

The case of one Irish family that exhibits a shoal which
lies always close to the track of ignorant poverty is even
now running in my mind, vainly demanding a practical
solution. I may say that I have inherited it from profes¬
sional philanthropists, who have struggled with it for more
than half a dozen years without finding the way out they
sought.

There were five children when they began, depending
on a mother who had about given up the struggle as use¬
less. The father was a loafer. When I took them the
children numbered ten, and the struggle was long since
over. The family bore the pauper stamp, and the moth¬
er’s tears, by a transition imperceptible probably to her¬
self, had become its stock in trade. Two of the chil¬
dren were working, earning all the money that came in ;
those that were not lay about in the room, watching the
charity visitor in a way and with an intentness that be¬
trayed their interest in the mother’s appeal. It required
very little experience to make the prediction that, shortly,

TONY AND HIS TRIBE

69

ten pauper families would cany on the campaign of the
one against society, if those children lived to grow up.
And they were not to blame, of course. I scarcely know
which was most to be condemned, when we tried to break
the family up by throwing it on the street as a necessary
step to getting possession of the children— the politician
who tripped us up with his influence in the court, or the
landlord who had all those years made the poverty on the
second floor pan out a golden interest. It was the out¬
rageous rent for the filthy den that had been the most ef¬
fective argument with sympathizing visitors. Their pity
had represented to him, as nearly as I could make out, for
eight long years, a capital of $2,600 invested at six per
cent., payable monthly. The idea of moving was prepos¬
terous ; for what other landlord would take in a homeless
family with ten children and no income ?

Children anywhere suffer little discomfort from mere
dirt. As an ingredient of mud-pies it may be said to be
not unwholesome. Play with the dirt is better than none
without it. In the tenements the children and the dirt are
sworn and loyal friends. In his early raids upon the estab¬
lished order of society, the gutter backs the boy up to the
best of its ability, with more or less exasperating success.
In the hot summer days, when he tries to sneak into the
free baths with every fresh batch, twenty times a day,
wretched little repeater that he is, it comes to his rescue
against the policeman at the door. Fresh mud smeared
on the face serves as a ticket of admission which no one
can refuse. At least so he thinks, but in his anxiety he
generally overdoes it and arouses the suspicion of the po¬
liceman, who, remembering that he was once a boy him¬
self, feels of his hair and reads his title there. When it
is a mission that is to be raided, or a “ dutch ” grocer’s

70

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

shop, or a parade of the rival gang from the next block,
the gutter furnishes ammunition that is always handy.
Dirt is a great leveller ;* it is no respecter of persons or
principles, and neither is the boy where it abounds. In
proportion as it accumulates such raids increase, the
Fresh Air Funds lose their grip, the saloon flourishes, and
turbulence grows. Down from the Fourth Ward, where
there is not much else, this wail came recently from a
Baptist Mission Church : “ The Temple stands in a

hard spot and neighborhood. The past week we had to
have arrested two fellows for throwing stones into the
house and causing annoyance. On George Washington’s
Birthday we had not put a flag over the doo^ on Henry
Street half an hour before it was stolen. When they
neither respect the house of prayer or the Stars and
Stripes one can feel young America is in a bad state.”
The pastor added that it was a comfort to him to know
that the “ fellows ” were Catholics ; but I think he was
hardly quite fair to them there. Religious enthusiasm
very likely had something to do with it, but it was not
the moving cause. The dirt was ; in other words : the
slum.

Such diversions are among the few and simple joys of
the street child’s life, Not all it affords, but all the street
has to offer. The Fresh Air Funds, the free excursions,

* Even as I am writing a transformation is being worked in some of the
filthiest streets on the East Side by a combination of new asphalt pave¬
ments with a greatly improved street cleaning service, that promises great
things. Some of the worst streets have within a few weeks become as
clean as I have not seen them in twenty years, and as they probably
never were since they were made. The unwonted brightness of the
surroundings is already visibly reflected in the persons and dress of the
tenants, notably the children. They take to it gladly, giving the lie to
the old assertion that they are pigs and would rather live like pigs.

TONY AND HIS TRIBE

n

and the many charities that year by year reach farther
down among the poor for their children have done and
are doing a great work in setting np new standards, ideals,
and ambitions in the domain of the street. One result is
seen in the effort of the poorest mothers to make their lit¬
tle ones presentable when there is anything to arouse their
maternal pride. But all these things must and do come
from the outside. Other resources than the sturdy inde¬
pendence that is its heritage the street has none. Rightly
used, that in itself is the greatest of all. Chief among its
native entertainments is that crowning joy, the parade of
the circus when it comes to town in the spring. For
many hours after that has passed, as after every public
show that costs nothing, the matron’s room at Police
Headquarters is crowded with youngsters who have fol¬
lowed it miles and miles from home, devouring its splen¬
dors with hungry eyes until the last elephant, the last
soldier, or the last policeman vanished from sight and the
child comes back to earth again and to the knowledge that
he is lost.

If the delights of his life are few, its sorrows do not sit
heavily upon him either. He is in too close and constant
touch with misery, with death itself, to mind it much.
To find a family of children living, sleeping, and eating in
the room where father or mother lies dead, without seem¬
ing to be in any special distress about it, is no unusual ex¬
perience. But if they do not weigh upon him, the cares of
home leave their mark ; and it is a bad mark. All the
darkness, all the drudgery is there. All the freedom is in
the street ; all the brightness in the saloon to which he
early finds his way. And as he grows in }Tears and wis¬
dom, if not in grace, he gets his first lessons in spelling
and in respect for the law from the card behind the bar,

72

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

with the big black letters : “ No liquor sold here to

children.” His opportunities for studying it while the
barkeeper fills his growler are unlimited and unrestricted.

Someone has said that our poor children do not know
how to play. He had probably seen a crowd of tenement
children dancing in the street to the accompaniment of a
liand-or^an and been struck by their serious mien and
painfully formal glide and carriage — if it was not a Ger¬
man neighborhood, where the “ proprieties ” are less strict¬
ly observed — but that was only because it was a ball and
it was incumbent on the girls to act as ladies. Only ladies
attend balls. “ London Bridge is falling down,” with as
loud a din in the streets of New York, every day, as it has
fallen these hundred years and more in every British
town, and the children of the Bend march “ all around
the mulberry-bush ” as gleefully as if there were a green
shrub to be found within a mile of their slum. It is the
slum that smudges the game too easily, and the kinder¬
garten work comes in in helping to wipe off the smut. So
far from New York children being duller at their play
than those of other cities and lands, I believe the reverse
to be true. Only in the very worst tenements have I ob¬
served the children’s play to languish. In such localities
two policemen are required to do the work of one. Or¬
dinarily they lack neither spirit nor inventiveness. I
watched a crowd of them having a donkey party in the
street one night, when those parties were all the rage.
The donkey hung in the window of a notion store, and a
knot of tenement-house children with tails improvised
from a newspaper, and dragged in the gutter to make them
stick, were staggering blindly across the sidewalk trying to
fix them in place on the pane. They got a heap of fun
out of the game, quite as much, it seemed to me, as any

PRESENT TENANTS OF JOHN ERICSSON’S OLD HOUSE, NOW THE BEACH STREET
INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL.

74

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

crowd of children could have got in a fine parlor, until the
storekeeper came out with his club. Every cellar-door
becomes a toboggan-slide where the children are around,
unless it is hammered full of envious nails ; every block a
ball-ground when the policeman’s back is turned, and
every roof a kite-field ; for that innocent amusement is
also forbidden by city ordinance “ below Fourteenth
Street.”

It is rather that their opportunities of mischief are
greater than those of harmless amusement ; made so, it
has sometimes seemed to me, with deliberate purpose to
hatch the “ tough.” Given idleness and the street, and
he will grow without other encouragement than an occa¬
sional “fanning” of a policeman’s club. And the street
has to do for a playground. There is no other. Central
Park is miles away. The small parks that were ordered
for his benefit five years ago exist yet only on paper.
Games like kite-flying and ball-playing, forbidden but not
suppressed, as happily they cannot be, become from harm¬
less play a successful challenge of law and order, that
points the way to later and worse achievements. Every
year the police forbid the building of election bonfires, and
threaten vengeance upon those who disobey the ordinance ;
and every election night sees the sky made lurid by them
from one end of the town to the other, with the police
powerless to put them out. Year by year the boys grow
bolder in their raids on property when their supply of
firewood has given out, until the destruction wrought
at the last election became a matter of public scandal.
Stoops, wagons, and in one place a show-case, containing
property worth many hundreds of dollars, were fed to the
flames. It has happened that an entire frame house has
been carried off piecemeal, and burned up election night.

TONY AND HIS TRIBE

75

The boys, organized in gangs, with the one condition of
membership that all must “ give in wood,” store up enor¬
mous piles of fuel for months before, and though the po¬
lice find and raid a good many of them, incidentally laying
in supplies of kindling-wood for the winter, the pile grows
again in a single night, as the neighborhood reluctantly
contributes its ash-barrels to the cause. The germ of the
gangs that terrorize whole sections of the city at intervals,
and feed our courts and our jails, may without much diffi¬
culty be discovered in these early and rather grotesque
struggles of the boys with the police.

Even on the national day of freedom the boy is not
left to the enjoyment of his firecracker without the inef¬
fectual threat of the law. I am not defending the fire¬
cracker, but arraigning the failure of the law to carry its
point and maintain its dignity. It has robbed the poor
child of the street-band, one of his few harmless delights,
grudgingly restoring the hand-organ, but not the monkey
that lent it its charm. In the band that, banished from
the street, sneaks into the back-yard, horns and bassoons
hidden under bulging coats, the boy hails no longer the
innocent purveyor of amusement, but an ally in the fight
with the common enemy, the policeman. In the Thanks¬
giving Day and New Year parades which the latter for¬
mally permits, he furnishes them with the very weapon of
gang organization which they afterward turn against him
to his hurt.

And yet this boy who, when taken from his alley into
the country for the first time, cries out in delight, “ How
blue the sky and what a lot of it there is ! ” — not much of
it at home in his barrack — has in the very love of dra¬
matic display that sends him forth to beat a policeman
with his own club or die in the attempt, in the intense

76

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

vanity that is only a perverted form of pride, capable
of any achievement, a handle by which he may be most
easily grasped and led. It cannot be done by gorging
him en masse with apples and gingerbread at a Christmas
party.* It can be done only by individual effort, and by
the influence of personal character in direct contact with
the child — the great secret of success in all dealings with
the poor. Foul as the gutter he comes from, he is open to
the reproach of “ bad form ” as few of his betters. Great¬
er even than his desire eventually to “ down ” a policeman,
is his ambition to be a “ gentleman,’’ as his sister’s to be a
“ lady.” The street is responsible for the caricature
either makes of the character. On a play-bill I saw in an
East Side street, only the other day, this repertoire set
down: “Thursday — The Bowery Tramp; Friday — The
Thief.” It was a theatre I knew newsboys, and the other
children of the street who were earning money, to frequent
in shoals. The play-bill suggested the sort of training
they received there.

I wish I might tell the story of some of these very lads
whom certain enthusiastic friends of mine tided to reclaim
on a plan of their own, in which the gang became a club
and its members “ Knights,” who made and executed their
own laws ; but I am under heavy bonds of promises
made to keep the peace on this point. The fact is, I tried
it once, and my well-meant effort made no end of trouble.
I had failed to appreciate the stride of civilization that
under my friends’ banner marched about the East Side

* As a matter of fact, I heard, after the last one that caused so much
discussion, in a court that sent seventy-five children to the show, a uni¬
versal growl of discontent. The effect on the children, even to those
who received presents, was bad. They felt that they had been on ex¬
hibition, and their greed was aroused. It was as I expected it would
be.

TONY AND HIS TRIBE

77

with seven-league boots. They read the magazines down
there and objected, rather illogical ly, to being “ shown up.”
The incident was a striking revelation of the wide gap be¬
tween the conditions that prevail abroad and those that
confront us. Fancy the Westminster Review or the
Nineteenth Century breeding contention among the deni¬
zens of East London by any criticism of their ways ? Yet
even from Hell’s Kitchen had I not long before been
driven forth with my camera by a band of angry women,
who pelted me with brickbats and stones on my retreat,
shouting at me never to come back unless I wanted my
head broken, or let any other “ duck” from the (mention¬
ing a well-known newspaper of which I was unjustly sus¬
pected of being an emissary) poke his nose in there.
Reform and the magazines had not taken that stronghold
of toughdom yet, but their vanguard, the newspapers, had
evidently got there.

“It only shows,” said one of my missionary friends,
commenting upon the East Side incident, “ that we are all
at sixes and at sevens here.” It is our own fault. In our
unconscious pride of caste most of us are given to looking
too much and too long at the rough outside. These same
workers bore cheerful testimony to the “ exquisite cour¬
tesy ” with which they were received every day in the
poorest homes ; a courtesy that might not always know the
ways of polite society, but always tried its best to find
them. “ In over fifty thousand visits,” reports a physi¬
cian, whose noble life is given early and late to work that
has made her name blessed where sorrow and suffering add
their sting to bitter poverty, “ personal violence has been
attempted on but two occasions. In each case children
had died from neglect of parents, who, in their drunken
rage, would certainly have taken the life of the physician,

78

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

had she not promptly run away.” Patience and kindness
prevailed even with these. The doctor did not desert
them, even though she had had to run, believing that one
of the mothers at least drank because she was poor and
unable to find work ; and now, after five years of many
trials and failures, she reports that the family is at work
and happy and grateful in rooms “ where the sun beams
in.” Gratitude, indeed, she found to be their strong point,
always seeking an outlet in expression — evidence of a lack
of bringing up, certainly. “ Once,” she says, “ the thank¬
ful fathers of two of our patients wished to vote for us, as
‘ the lady doctors have no vote.’ Their intention was to
vote for General Butler ; we have proof that they voted
for Cleveland. They have even placed their own lives
in danger for us. One man fought a duel with a wom¬
an, she having said that women doctors did not know as
much as men. After bar-tumblers were used as weapons
the question was decided in favor of women doctors by
the man. It seemed but proper that ‘the lady doctor’
was called in to bind up the wounds of her champion,
while a ‘ man doctor ’ performed the service for the wom¬
an.”

My friends, in time, by their gentle but firm manage¬
ment, gained the honest esteem and loyal support of the
boys whose manners and minds they had set out to im¬
prove, and through such means worked wonders. While
some of their experiences were exceedingly funny, more
were of a kind to show how easily the material could
be moulded, if the hands were only there to mould it.
One of their number, by and by, hung out her shingle
in another street with the word “Doctor” over the bell
(not the physician above referred to), but her “ character ”
had preceded her, and woe to the urchin who as much

TONY AND HIS TRIBE

79

as glanced at that when the gang pulled all the other
bells in the block and laughed at the wrath of the tenants.
One luckless chap forgot himself far enough to yank it
one night, and immediately an angry cry went up from
the gang, “ Who pulled dat bell \ ” “ Mickey did/’ was the
answer, and Mickey’s howls announced to the amused
doctor the next minute that he had been “slugged” and
she avenged. This doctor’s account of the first formal call
of the gang in the block was highly amusing. It called in
a body and showed a desire to please that tried the host’s
nerves not a little. The boys vied with each other in re¬
counting for her entertainment their encounters with the
police enemy, and in exhibiting their intimate knowledge
of the wickedness of the slums in minutest detail. One,
who was scarcely twelve years old, and had lately moved
from Bayard Street, knew all the ins and outs of the
Chinatown opium dives, and painted them in glowing
colors. The doctor listened with half-amused dismay, and
when the boys rose to go, told them she was glad they had
called. So were they, they said, and they guessed they
would call again the next night.

“ Oh ! don't come to-morrow,” said the doctor, in some¬
thing of a fright ; “ come next week !” She was relieved
upon hearing the leader of the gang reprove the rest of
the fellows for their want of style. He bowed with great
precision, and announced that he would call “in about two
weeks.”

The testimony of these workers agrees with that of most
others who reach the girls at an age when they are yet
manageable, that the most abiding results follow with
them, though they are harder to get at. The boys respond
more readily, but also more easily fall from grace. The
same good and bad traits are found in both ; the same

80

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

trying superficiality — which merely means that they are
raw material ; the same readiness to lie as the shortest cut
out of a scrape ; the same generous helpfulness, character¬
istic of the poor everywhere. Out of the depth of their
bitter poverty I saw the children in the West Fifty-second
Street Industrial School, last Thanksgiving, bring for the
relief of the aged and helpless and those even poorer than
they such gifts as they could — a handful of ground coffee
in a paper bag, a couple of Irish potatoes, a little sugar or
flour, and joyfully offer to carry them home. It was on
such a trip I found little Katie. In her person and work
she answered the question sometimes asked, why we hear
so much about the boys and so little of the girls; be¬
cause the home and the shop claim their work much earlier
and to a much greater extent, while the boys are turned
out to shift for themselves, and because, therefore, their
miseries are so much more commonplace, and proportion¬
ally uninteresting. It is a woman’s lot to suffer in silence.
If occasionally she makes herself heard in querulous pro¬
test; if injustice long borne gives her tongue a sharper
edge than the occasion seems to require, it can at least be
said in her favor that her bark is much worse than her
bite. The missionary who complains that the wife nags
her husband to the point of making the saloon his refuge,
or the sister her brother until he flees to the street, bears
testimony in the same breath to her readiness to sit up all
night to mend the clothes of the scamp she so hotly de¬
nounces. Sweetness of temper or of speech is not a dis¬
tinguishing feature of tenement-house life, any more
among the children than with their elders. In a party
sent out by our committee for a summer vacation on a
Jersey farm, last summer, was a little knot of six girls
from the Seventh Ward. They had not been gone three

TONY AND HIS TRIBE

81

days before a letter came from one of them to the mother
of one of the others. “ Mrs. Reilly,” it read, “ if you
have any sinse you will send for your child.” That they
would all be murdered was the sense the frightened mother
made out of it. The six came home post haste, the youngest
in a state of high dudgeon at her sudden translation back
to the tenement. The lonesomeness of the farm had
frightened the others. She was little more than a baby,
and her desire to go back was explained by one of the res¬
cued ones thus : “ She sat two mortil hours at the table a
stuffin’ of herself, till the missus she says, says she, ‘ Does
yer mother lave ye to sit that long at the table, sis?’”
The poor thing was where there was enough to eat for
once in her life, and she was making the most of her
opportunity.

Rot rarely does this child of common clay rise to a
height of heroism that discovers depths of feeling and
character full of unsuspected promise. It was in March a
year ago that a midnight fire, started by a fiend in human
shape, destroyed a tenement in Hester Street, killing a
number of the tenants. On the fourth floor the firemen
found one of these penned in with his little girl and helped
them to the window. As they were handing out the
child, she broke away from them suddenly and stepped
back into the smoke to what seemed certain death. The
firemen climbing after, groped around shouting for her to
come back. Half-way across the room they came upon
her, gasping and nearly smothered, dragging a doll’s trunk
over the floor.

“ I could not leave it,” she said, thrusting it at the men
as they seized her ; “ my mother - ”

They flung the box angrily through the window. It
fell crashing on the sidewalk and, breaking open, revealed

a

82

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

no doll or finery, but the deed for her dead mother’s
grave. Little Bessie had not forgotten her, despite her
thirteen years.

Yet Bessie might, likely would, have been found in the
front row where anything was going on or to be had,
crowding with the best of them and thrusting herself and
her claim forward regardless of anything or anybody else.
It is a quality in the children which, if not admirable, is at
least natural. The poor have to take their turn always,
and too often it never comes, or, as in the case of the poor
young mother, whom one of our committee found riding
aimlessly in a street car with her dying babjT, not knowing
where to go or what to do, when it is too late. She took
mother and child to the dispensary. It was crowded and
they had to wait their turn. When it came the baby was
dead. It is not to be expected that children who have
lived the lawless life of the street should patiently put up
with such a prospect. That belongs to the discipline of a
life of failure and want. The children know generally
what they want and they go for it by the shortest cut. I
found that out, whether I had flowers to give or pictures
to take. In the latter case they reversed my Hell’s
Kitchen experience with a vengeance. Their determina¬
tion to be “took,” the moment the camera hove in sight,
in the most striking pose they could hastily devise, was
always the most formidable bar to success I met. The
recollection of one such occasion haunts me yet. They
were serving a Thanksgiving dinner free to all comers at
a charitable institution in Mulberry Street, and more than
a hundred children were in line at the door under the eve
of a policeman when I tried to photograph them. Each
one of the forlorn host had been hugging his particular
place for an hour, shivering in the cold as the line slowly

TONY AND HIS TRIBE

83

advanced toward the door and the promised dinner, and
there had been numberless little spats due to the anxiety
of some one farther back to steal a march on a neighbor
nearer the goal ; but the instant the camera appeared the
line broke and a howling mob swarmed about me, up to
the very eye of the camera, striking attitudes on the curb,
squatting in the mud in alleged picturesque repose, and
shoving and pushing in a wild struggle to get into the
most prominent position. With immense trouble and
labor the policeman and I made a narrow lane through the
crowd from the camera to the curb, in the hope that the
line might form again. The lane was studded, the mo¬
ment I turned my back, with dirty faces that were thrust
into it from both sides in ludicrous anxiety lest they
should be left out, and in the middle of it two frowsy, ill-
favored girls, children of ten or twelve, took position,
hand in hand, flatly refusing to budge from in front of
the camera. Neither jeers nor threats moved them.
They stood their ground with a grim persistence that said
as plainly as words that they were not going to let this, the
supreme opportunity of their lives, pass, cost what it might.
In their rags, barefooted, and in that disdainful pose in the
midst of a veritable bedlam of shrieks and laughter, they
were a most ludicrous spectacle. The boys fought rather
shy of them, of one they called “Mag” especialljq as it
afterward appeared with good reason. A chunk of wood
from the outskirts of the crowd that hit Mag on the ear at
length precipitated a fight in which the boys struggled
ten deep on the pavement, Mag in the middle of the heap,
doing her full share. As a last expedient I bethought my¬
self of a dog-fight as the means of scattering the mob, and
sent around the corner to organize one. Fatal mistake !
At the first suggestive bark the crowd broke and ran in a

84

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

body. Not only the hangers-on, but the hungry line col¬
lapsed too in an instant, and the policeman and I were
left alone. As an attraction the dog-fight outranked the
dinner.

This unconquerable vanity, if not turned to use for his
good, makes a tough of the lad with more muscle than
brains in a perfectly natural way. The newspapers tickle
it by recording the exploits of his gang with embellish¬
ments that fall in exactly with his tastes. Idleness en¬
courages it. The home exercises no restraint. Parental
authority is lost. At a certain age young men of all social
grades know a heap more than their fathers, or think they
do. The young tough has some apparent reason for
thinking that way. He has likely learned to read. The
old man has not ; he probably never learned anything,
not even to speak the language that his son knows with¬
out being taught. He thinks him “ dead slow,” of course,
and lays it to his foreign birth. All foreigners are “ slow.”
The father works hard. The boy thinks he knows a bet¬
ter plan. The old man has lost his grip on the lad, if he
ever had any. That is the reason why the tough appears
in the second generation and disappears in the third. By
that time father and son are again on equal terms, what¬
ever those terms may be. The exception to this rule is in
the poorest Irish settlements where the manufacture of
the tough goes right on, aided by the “ inflooence ” of the
police court on one side and the saloon on the other. Be¬
tween the two the police fall unwillingly into line. I was
in the East Thirty-fifth Street police station one night
when an officer came in with two young toughs whom he
had arrested in a lumber yard where they were smoking
and drinking. They had threatened to kill him and the
watchman, and loaded revolvers were taken from them.

TONY AND IIIS TPwIBE

85

In spite of this evidence against them, the Justice in the
police court discharged them on the following morn¬
ing with a scowl at the officer, and they were both jeering
at him before noon. Naturally he let them alone after
that. It was one case of hundreds of like character. The
politician, of course, is behind them. Toughs have votes
just as they have brickbats and brass-knuckles ; when the
emergency requires, an assortment to suit of the one as
of the other.

The story of the tough’s career I told in “ How the
Other Half Lives,” and there is no need of repeating it
here. Its end is generally lurid, always dramatic. It is
that even when it comes to him “ with his boots off,” in a
peaceful sick bed. In his bravado one can sometimes
catch a glimpse of the sturdiest traits in the Celtic nature,
burlesqued and caricatured by the tenement. One who
had been a cut-throat, bruiser, and prizefighter all his brief
life lay dying from consumption in his Fourth Ward tene¬
ment not long ago. He had made what he proudly called
a stand-up fight against the disease until now the end had
come and he had at last to give up.

“ Maggie,” he said, turning to his wife with eyes grow¬
ing dim, “ Mag ! I had an iron heart, but now it is broke.
Watch me die ! ” And Mag told it proudly at the wake
as proof that Pat died game.

And the girl that has come thus far with him ? Fewer
do than one might think. Many more switch off their
lovers to some honest work this side of the jail, making
decent husbands of them as they are loyal wives, thus
proving themselves truly their better halves. But of her
who goes his way with him — it is not generally a long way
for either — what of her end ? Let me tell the story of
one that is the story of all. I came across it in the course

86

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

of my work as a newspaper man a year ago and I repeat
it here as I heard it then from those who knew, with only
the names changed. The girl is dead, but he is alive and
leading an honest life at last, so I am told. The story is
that of “ Kid ” McDuff’s girl.

CHAPTER V.

THE STORY OF KID McDUFF'S GIRL

THE back room of the saloon on the northwest corner
of Pell Street and the Bowery is never cheery on the
brightest day. The entrance to the dives of Chinatown
yawns just outside, and in the bar-room gather the vilest
of the wrecks of the Bend and the Sixth Ward slums.
But on the morning of which I speak a shadow lay over
it even darker than usual. The shadow of death was
there. In the corner, propped on one chair, with her feet
on another, sat a dead woman. Her glassy eyes looked
straight ahead with a stony, unmeaning stare until the
policeman who dozed at a table at the other end of the
room, suddenly waking up and meeting it, got up with a
shudder and covered the face with a handkerchief.

What did they see, those dead eyes? Through its
darkened windows what a review was the liberated spirit
making of that sin-worn, wasted life, begun in innocence
and wasted — there ? Whatever their stare meant, the
policeman knew little of it and cared less.

“ Oh ! it is just a stiff,” he said, and yawned wearily.
There was still half an hour of his watch.

The clinking of glasses and the shuffle of cowhide
boots on the sanded floor outside grew louder and was
muffled again as the door leading to the bar was opened
and shut by a young woman. She lingered doubtfully on
the threshold a moment, then walked with unsteady step

88

TIIE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

across the room toward the corner where the corpse sat.
The light that struggled in from the gloomy street fell
upon her and showed that she trembled, as if with the
ague. Yet she was young, not over twenty -five ; but on
her heavy eyes and sodden features there was the stamp
death had just blotted from the other’s face with the
memory of her sins. Yet, curiously blended with it, not
yet smothered wholly, there was something of the child,
something that had once known a mother’s love and pity.

“ Poor Kid,” she said, stopping beside the body and
sinking heavily in a chair. “ He will be sorry, anyhow.”

“Who is Kid?” I asked.

“ Why, Kid McDuff ! You know him ? His brother

Jim keeps the saloon on - Street. Everybody knows

Kid.”

“ W ell, what was she to Kid ? ” I asked, pointing to the
corpse.

“ His girl,” she said promptly. “ An’ he stuck to her
till he wras pulled for the job he didn’t do ; then he had to
let her slide. She stuck to him too, you bet.

“ Annie wasn’t no more nor thirteen when she was tuk
away from home by the Kid,” the girl went on, talk¬
ing as much to herself as to me ; the policeman nodded
in his chair. “ He kep’ her the best he could, ’ceptin’
when he was sent up on the Island the time the gang went
back on him. Then she kinder drifted. But she was all
right agin he come back and tuk to keepin’ bar for his
brother Jim. Then he was pulled for that Bridgeport
skin job, and when he went to the pen she went to the
bad, and now - ”

Here a thought that had been slowly working down
through her besotted mind got a grip on her strong
enough to hold her attention, and she leaned over and

THE STORY OF KID McDUFF’S GIRL

89

caught me by the sleeve, something almost akin to pity
struggling in her bleary eyes.

“ Say, young feller,” she whispered hoarsely, <c don’t
spring this too hard. She’s got two lovely brothers. One
of them keeps a daisy saloon up on Eighth Avenue.
They’re respectable, they are.”

Then she went on telling what she knew of Annie
Noonan who was sitting dead there before us. It was
not much. She was the child of an honest shoemaker
who came to this country twenty-two or three years before
from his English home, when Annie was a little girl of six
or seven. Before she was in her teens she was left father¬
less. At the age of thirteen, when she was living in an
East Side tenement with her mother, the Kid, then a
young tough qualifying with one of the many gangs about
the Hook for the penitentiary, crossed her path. Ever
after she was his slave, and followed where he led.

The path they trod together was not different from that
travelled by hundreds of young men and women to-day.
By way of the low dives and “ morgues ” with which the
East Side abounds, it led him to the Island and her to the
street. When he was sent up the first time, his mother
died of a broken heart. Ilis father, a well-to-do mechanic
in the Seventh Ward, had been spared that misery. He
had died before the son was fairly started on his bad
career. The family were communicants at the parish
church, and efforts without end were made to turn the Kid
from his career of wicked folly. His two sisters labored
faithfully with him, but without avail. When the Kid
came back from the Island to find his mother dead, he did
not know his oldest sister. Grief had turned her pretty
brown hair a snowy white.

He found his girl a little the worse for rum and late

90

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

hours than when he left her, but he “ took up ” with her
again. He was loyal at least. This time lie tried, too, to
be honest. His mother’s death had shocked him to the
point where his “ nerve ” gave out. His brother gave
him charge of one of his saloons and the Kid was “ at
work ” keeping bar, with the way to respectability, as it
goes on the East Side, open to him, when one of his old
pals, who had found him out, turned up with a demand
for money. He was a burglar and wanted a hundred
dollars to “ do up a job ” in the country. The Kid refused,
and his brother came in during the quarrel that ensued,
flew into a rage, and grabbing the thief by the collar,
threw him into the street. He went his way shaking his
fist and threatening vengeance on both.

It was not long in coming. A jewelry store in Bridge¬
port was robbed and two burglars were arrested. One of
them was the man “ Jim” McDuff had thrown out of his
saloon. He turned State’s evidence and swore that the Kid
was in the job too. He was arrested and held in bail of
ten thousand dollars. The Kid always maintained that he
was innocent. His family believed him, but his past was
against him. It was said, too, that back of the arrest was
political persecution. His brother the saloon-keeper, who
mixed politics with his beer, was the under dog just then
in the fight in his ward. The situation was discussed from
a practical standpoint in the McDuff household, and it
ended with the Kid going up to Bridgeport and pleading
guilty to theft to escape the worse charge of burglary.
He was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. That
was how he got into “ the pen.”

Annie, after he had been put in jail, went to the dogs
on her own account rather faster than when they made a
team. For a time she frequented the saloons of the Tenth

THE STORY OF KID McDUFF’S GIRL

91

Ward. When she crossed the Bowery at last she was
nearing the end. For a year or two she frequented the
disreputable houses in Elizabeth and Hester Streets. She
was supposed to have a room in Downing Street, but it
was the rarest of all events that she was there.

Two weeks before this morning, Fay Leslie, the girl
who sat there telling me her story, met her on the Bowery
with a cut and bruised face. She had been beaten in a
fight in a Pell Street saloon with Flossie Lowell, one of
the habitues of Chinatown. Fay took her to Bellevue
Hospital, where she 44 had a pull with the night watch,”
she told me, and she was kept there three or four days.
When she came out she drifted back to Pell Street and
took to drinking again. But she was a sick girl.

The night before she was with Fay in the saloon on the
corner, when she complained that she did not feel well.
She sat down in a chair and put her feet on another. In
that posture she was found dead a little later, when her
friend went to see how she was getting on.

“ Bum killed her, I suppose,” I said, when Fay had
ended her story.

44 Yes ! I suppose it did.”

“ And you,” I ventured, 44 some day it will kill you
too, if you do not look out.”

The girl laughed a loud and coarse laugh.

44 Me ? ” she said, 44 not by a jugful. I’ve been soak¬
ing it fifteen years and I am alive yet.”

The dead girl sat there yet, with the cold, staring eyes,
when I went my way. Outside the drinking went on with
vile oaths. The dead wagon had been sent for, but it had
other errands, and had not yet come around to Pell Street.

Thus ended the story of Kid McDuff’s girl.

CHAPTER VI.

THE LITTLE TOILERS

POVERTY and child-labor are yoke-fellows every¬
where. Their union is perpetual, indissoluble. The
one begets the other. Reed sets the child to work
wdien it should have been at school and its labor breeds
low wages, thus increasing the need. Solomon said
it three thousand years ago, and it has not been said
better since : 44 The destruction of the poor is their
poverty.”

It is the business of the State to see to it that its interest
in the child as a future citizen is not imperilled by the
compact. Here in New York we set about this within
the memory of the youngest of us. To-day we have com¬
pulsory education and a factory law prohibiting the employ¬
ment of young children. All between eight and fourteen
years old must go to school at least fourteen weeks in
each year. None may labor in factories under the age
of fourteen ; not under sixteen unless able to read and
write simple sentences in English. These are the barriers
thrown up against the inroads of ignorance, poverty’s
threat. They are barriers of paper. We have the laws,
but we do not enforce them.

By that I do not mean to say that we make no attempt
to enforce them. We do. We catch a few hundred tru¬
ants each year and send them to reformatories to herd with
thieves and vagabonds worse than they, rather illogically,

THE LITTLE TOILERS

93

since there is no pretence that there would have been room
for them in the schools had they wanted to go there. We
set half a dozen factory inspectors to canvass more than
twice as many thousand workshops and to catechise the
children they find there. Some are turned out and go
back the next day to that or some other shop. The great
mass that are under age lie and stay. And their lies go
on record as evidence that we are advancing, and that
child-labor is getting to be a thing of the past. That the
horrible cruelty of a former day is ; that the children have
better treatment and a better time of it in the shops —
often a good enough time to make one feel that they are
better off there learning habits of industry than running
about the streets, so long as there is no way of making
them attend school — I believe from what I have seen.
That the law has had the effect of greatly diminishing the
number of child-workers I do not believe. It has had an¬
other and worse effect. It has bred wholesale perjury
among them and their parents. Already they have be¬
come so used to it that it is a matter of sport and a stand¬
ing joke among them. The child of eleven at home and
at night-school is fifteen in the factory as a matter of
course. Nobody is deceived, but the perjury defeats the
purpose of the law.

More than a year ago, in an effort to get at the truth of
the matter of children’s labor, I submitted to the Board
of Health, after consultation with Dr. Felix Adler, who
earned the lasting gratitude of the community by his
labors on the Tenement House Commission, certain ques¬
tions to be asked concerning the children by the sanitary
police, then about to begin a general census of the tene¬
ments. The result was a surprise, and not least to the
health officers. In the entire mass of nearly a million

94

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

and a quarter of tenants* only two hundred and forty-nine
children under fourteen years of age were found at work
in living-rooms. To anyone acquainted with the ordinary
aspect of tenement-house life the statement seemed prepos¬
terous, and there are valid reasons for believing that the
policemen missed rather more than they found even of
those that were confessedly or too evidently under age.
They were seeking that which, when found, would fur¬
nish proof of law-breaking against the parent or employer,
a fact of which these were fully aware. Hence their com¬
ing uniformed and in search of children into a house
could scarcely fail to give those a holiday who were not
big enough to be palmed off as fourteen at least. Never¬
theless, upon reflection, it seemed probable that the po¬
licemen were nearer the truth than their critics. Their
census took no account of the factory in the back yard,
but only of the living rooms, and it was made during the
day. Most of the little slaves, as of those older in years,
were found in the sweater’s district on the East Side, where
the home work often only fairly begins after the factory has
shut down for the day and the stores released their army
of child-laborers. Had the policemen gone their rounds
after dark they would have found a different state of
things. Between the sweat-shops and the school, which,
as I have shown, is made to reach farther down among
the poorest in this Jewish quarter than anywhere else in
this city, the children were fairly accounted for in the
daytime. The record of school attendance in the district
shows that forty-seven attended day-school for every one
who went to night-school.

* The Sanitary census of 1891 gave 87,858 tenements, containing 276,-
565 families, including 160,708 children under five years of age ; total
population of tenements, 1,225,411.

THE LITTLE TOILERS

95

To settle the matter to my own satisfaction I undertook
a census of a number of the most crowded houses, in com¬
pany with a policeman not in uniform. The outcome
proved that, as regards those houses at least, it was as I
suspected, and I have no doubt they were a fair sample of
the rest. In nine tenements that were filled with home¬
workers we found five children at work who owned that they
were under fourteen. Two were girls nine years of age.
Two boys said they were thirteen. We found thirteen who
swore that they were of age, proof which the policeman
as an uninterested census-taker would have respected as a
matter of course, even though he believed with me that
the children lied. On the other hand, in seven back-yard
factories we found a total of 63 children, of whom 5 ad¬
mitted being under age, while of the rest 45 seemed surely
so. To the other 13 we gave the benefit of the doubt, but
I do not think they deserved it. All the 63 were to my
mind certainly under fourteen, judging not only from
their size, but from the whole appearance of the children.
My subsequent experience confirmed me fully in this be¬
lief. Most of them were able to write their names af¬
ter a fashion. Few spoke English, but that might have
been a subterfuge. One of the home-workers, a marvel¬
lously small lad whose arms were black to the shoulder
from the dye in the cloth he was sewing, and who said in
his broken German, without evincing special interest in
the matter, that he had gone to school “ e’ bische’,” referred
us to his “ mother ” for a statement as to his age. The
“ mother,” who proved to be the boss’s wife, held a brief
consultation with her husband and then came forward
with a verdict of sixteen. When we laughed rather in¬
credulously the man offered to prove by his marriage cer¬
tificate that the boy must be sixteen. The effect of this

96

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

demonstration was rather marred, however, by the inop¬
portune appearance of another tailor, who, ignorant of the
crisis, claimed the boy as his. The situation was dramatic.
The tailor with the certificate simply shrugged his shoul¬
ders and returned to his work, leaving the boy to his fate.

One girl, who could not have been twelve years old,
was hard at work at a sewing-machine in a Division
Street shirt factory when we came in. She got up
and ran the moment she saw us, but we caught her in the
next room hiding behind a pile of shirts. She said at once
that she was fourteen years old but didn’t work there.
She “just came in.” The boss of the shop was lost in
astonishment at seeing her when we brought her back.
He could not account at all for her presence. There
were three boys at work in the room who said “ sixteen ”
without waiting to be asked. Hot one of them was four¬
teen. The habit of saying fourteen or sixteen — the fashion
varies with the shops and with the degree of the child’s
educational acquirements — soon becomes an unconscious
one with the boy. lie plumps it out without knowing it.
While occupied with these investigations I once had my
boots blacked by a little shaver, hardly knee-high, on a
North River ferry-boat. While he was shining away, I
suddenly asked him how old he was. “Fourteen, sir!”
he replied promptly, without looking up.

In a Hester Street house we found two little girls pull¬
ing basting-thread. They were both Italians and said that
they were nine. In the room in which one of them worked
thirteen men and two women were sewing. The child
could speak English. She said that she was earning a
dollar a week and worked every day from seven in the
morning till eight in the evening. This sweat-shop was
one of the kind that comes under the ban of the new law,

THE LITTLE TOILERS

97

passed last winter — that is, if the factory inspector ever
finds it. Where the crowds are greatest and the pay
poorest, the Italian laborer’s wife and child have found
their way in since the strikes among the sweater’s Jewish
slaves, outbidding even these in the fierce strife for bread.

Even the crowding, the feverish haste of the half-
naked men and women, and the litter and filth in which
they worked, were preferable to the silence and desolation
we encountered in one shop up under the roof of a Broome
Street tenement. The work there had sriven out — there
had been none these two months, said the gaunt, hard-faced
woman who sat eating a crust of dry bread and drink¬
ing water from a tin pail at the empty bench. The man
sat silent and moody in a corner ; he was sick. The room
was bare. The only machine left was not worth tak¬
ing to the pawnshop. Two dirty children, naked but for
a torn undershirt apiece, were fishing over the stair-rail
with a bent pin on an idle thread. An old rag was
their bait.

From among a hundred and forty hands on two big lofts
in a Suffolk Street factory we picked seventeen boys and ten
girls who were patently under fourteen years of age, but
who all had certificates, sworn to by their parents, to the
effect that they were sixteen. One of them whom we judged
to be between nine and ten, and whose teeth confirmed
our diagnosis — the second bicuspids in the lower jaw were
just coming out — said that he had worked there “ by the
year.” The boss, deeming his case hopeless, explained that
he only “ made sleeves and went for beer.” Two of the
smallest girls represented themselves as sisters, respect¬
ively sixteen and seventeen, but when we came to in¬
quire which was the oldest, it turned out that she was
the sixteen -year one. Several boys scooted as we came
7

98

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

up the stairs. When stopped they claimed to be vis¬
itors. I was told that this sweater had been arrested once
by the Factory Inspector, but had successfully barricaded
himself behind his pile of certificates. I caught the children
laughing and making faces at us behind our backs as often
as these were brought out anywhere. In an Attorney Street
pants” factory we counted thirteen boys and girls who
could not have been of age, and on a top floor in Lud¬
low Street, among others, two brothers, sewing coats, who
said that they were thirteen and fourteen, but, when
told to stand up, looked so ridiculously small as to make
even their employer laugh. Neither could read, but the
oldest could sign his name and did it thus, from right to
left :

It was the full extent of his learning, and all he would
probably ever receive.

He was one of many Jewish children we came across who
could neither read nor write. Most of them answered that
they had never gone to school. They were mostly those
of larger growth, bordering on fourteen, whom the char¬
ity school managers find it next to impossible to reach,
the children of the poorest and most ignorant immigrants,
whose work is imperatively needed to make both ends
meet at home, the “ thousand ” the school census failed to
account for. To banish them from the shop serves no
useful purpose. They are back the next day, if not sooner.
One of the Factory Inspectors told me of how recently he
found a little boy in a sweat-shop and sent him home, lie
went up through the house after that and stayed up there

THE LITTLE TOILERS

99

quite an horn . On his return it occurred to him to look
in to see if the boy was gone. He was back and hard
at work, and with him were two other boys of his age
who, though they claimed to have come in with dinner
for some of the hands, were evidently workers there.

So much for the sweat-shops. Jewish, Italian, and Bo¬
hemian, the story is the same always. In the children
that are growing up, to “ vote as would their master’s dogs
if allowed the right of suffrage,” the community reaps
its reward in due season for allowing such things to exist.
It is a kind of interest in the payment of which there is
never default. The physician gets another view of it.
“Hot long ago,” says Dr. Annie S. Daniel, in the last
report of the out-practice of the Infirmary for Women and
Children, “ we found in such an apartment five persons
making cigars, including the mother. Two children were
ill with diphtheria. Both parents attended to the children ;
they would syringe the nose of each child and, without
washing their hands, return to their cigars. We have re¬
peatedly observed the same thing when the work was
manufacturing clothing and under-garments, to be bought
as well by the rich as the poor. Hand-sewed shoes, made
for a fashionable Broadway shoe store, were sewed at
home by a man in whose family were three children with
scarlet fever. And such instances are common. Only
death or lack of work closes tenement-house manufactories.
When reported to the Board of Health, the inspector at
once prohibits further manufacture during the continuance
of the disease, but his back is scarcely turned before the
people return to their work. When we consider that
stopping this work means no food and no roof over their
heads, the fact that the disease may be carried by their
work cannot be expected to impress the people.”

100

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

And she adds : “Wages have steadily decreased. Among
the women who earned the whole or part of the income
the finishing of pantaloons was the most common occupa¬
tion. For this work in 1881 they received ten to fifteen
cents per pair ; for the same work in 1891 three to five,

at the most ten cents
per pair. When the
women have paid the
express charges to and
from the factory there
is little margin left for
profit. The women do¬
ing this work claim that
wages are reduced be¬
cause of the influx of
Italian women.’ The
rent has not fallen, how¬
ever, and the need of
every member of the
family contributing by
his or her work to its
keep is greater than
ever. The average to¬
tal wages of 160 fami¬
lies whom the doctor
personally treated and
interrogated during the

SHINE, SIR?

year was $5.99 per
week, while the average rent was $8.62f. The list in¬
cluded twenty-three different occupations and trades. The
maximum wages was $19, earned by three persons in one
family ; the minimum $1.50, by a woman finishing panta¬
loons and living in one room for which she paid $4 a

THE LITTLE TOILERS

101

month rent ! In nearly every instance observed by Dr.
Daniel, the children’s wages, when there were working chil¬
dren, was the greater share of the family income. A speci¬
men instance is that of a woman with a consumptive hus¬
band, who is under her treatment. The wife washes and
goes out by the day, when she can get such work to do.
The three children, aged eleven, seven, and five years, not
counting the baby for a wonder, work at home covering
wooden buttons with silk at four cents a gross. The oldest
goes to school, but works with the rest evenings and on
Saturday and Sunday, when the mother does the finishing.
Their combined earnings are from $3 to $6 a week, the
children earning two-thirds. The rent is $8 a month.

The doctor’s observations throw a bright side-light upon
the economic home conditions that lie at the root of this
problem of child labor in the factories. "With that I have
not done. Taking the Factory Inspector’s report for 1890,
the last at that time available, I found that in that year
his deputies got around to 2,147 of the 11,000 workshops
(the number given in the report) in the Second district,
which is that portion of New York south of Twenty-third
Street. In other words, they visited less than one-fifth of
them all. They found 1,102 boys and 1,954 girls under
sixteen at work; 3,485 boys under eighteen, and 12,701
girls under twenty-one, as nearly as I could make the foot¬
ings. The figures alone are instructive, as showing the
preponderance of girls in the shops. The report, speak¬
ing of the State as a whole, congratulates the community
upon the alleged fact “ that the policy of employing very
young children in manufactories has been practically abol¬
ished.” It states that “since the enactment of the law the
sentiment among employers has become nearly unanimous
in favor of its stringent enforcement,” and that it “lias

102

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

had the further important effect of preventing newly
arrived non-English speaking foreigners from forcing their
children into factories before they learned the language
of the country,” these being “now compelled to send
their children to school, for a time at least, until they can
qualify under the law.” Further, “the system of requir¬
ing sworn certificates, giving the name, date, and place
of birth of all children under sixteen years of age . . .

has resulted in causing parents to be very cautious about
making untrue statements of the ages of their children.”
The deputies “ are aware of the various subterfuges which
have been tried in order to evade the law and put children
at labor before the legal time,” and the Factory Inspector
is “ happy to say that they are not often imposed upon by
such tactics.”

Without wading through nearly seventy pages of small
print it was not possible to glean from the report how
many of the “ under sixteen ” workers were really under
fourteen, or so adjudged. A summary of what has been
accomplished since 1886 showed that 1,614 children under
fourteen were discharged by the Inspector in the Second
District in that time, and that 415 were discharged be¬
cause they could not read or write simple sentences in the
English language. The “number of working children
who could not read and write English” was in 1890 alone
252, according to the report, or more than one-half of the
whole number discharged in the four years, which does not
look as if the law had had much effect in that way, at
least in Xew York city. I determined to see for myself
what were the facts.

I visited a number of factories, in a few instances ac¬
companied by the deputy factory inspector, more fre¬
quently alone. Where it was difficult to gain admis-

THE LITTLE TOILEES

103

sion I watclied at the door when the employees were
going to or coming from work, finding that on the whole
the better plan, as affording a fairer view of the children
and a better opportunity to judge of their age than when
they sat at their work-benches. I found many shops in
which there were scarcely any children, some from which
they had been driven, so I was informed by the inspector
But where manufacturers were willing to employ their
labor — and this I believe to be quite generally the case
where children’s labor can be made to pay — I found the
age certificate serving as an excellent protection for the
employer, never for the child. I found the law consid¬
ered as a good joke by some conscienceless men, who
hardly took the trouble to see that the certificates were
filled out properly ; loudly commended by others whom it
enabled, at the expense of a little perjury in which they
had no hand, to fill up their shops with cheap labor, with
perfect security to themselves. The bookkeeper in an
establishment of the conscienceless kind told me with glee
how a boy who had been bounced there three times in one
year, upon his return each time had presented a sworn
certificate giving a different age. He was fifteen, sixteen,
and seventeen years old upon the records of the shop, until
the inpectors caught him one day and proved him only
thirteen. I found bo}rs at work, posing as seventeen, who
had been so recorded in the same shop three full years,
and were thirteen at most. As seventeen-year freaks they
could have made more money in a dime museum than at
the work-bench, only the museum would have required
something more convincing than the certificate that satis¬
fied the shop. Some of these boys were working at power-
presses and doing other work beyond their years. An
examination of their teeth often disproved their stories as

104

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

to their age. It was not always possible to make this test,
for the children seemed to see something funny in it, and
laughed and giggled so, especially the girls, as to make it
difficult to get a good look. Some of the girls, generally
those with decayed teeth,* would pout and refuse to show
them. These were usually American girls, that is to say,
they were born here. The greater number of the child-
workers I questioned were foreigners, and our birth
returns could have given no clue to them. The few na¬
tives were alert and on the defensive from the moment
they divined my purpose. They easily defeated it by
giving a false address.

I finally picked out a factory close to my office where
Italian girls were employed in large numbers, and made
it my business to ascertain the real ages of the children.
They seemed to me, going and coming, to average twelve
or thirteen years. The year before the factory inspector
had reported that nearly a hundred girls “ under sixteen ”
were employed there. She had discharged sixty of them
as unable to read or write English. I went to see the
manufacturers. They were not disposed to help me and
fell back on their certificates — no child was employed by
them without one — until I told them that my purpose was
not to interfere with their business but to prove that a
birth-certificate was the only proper warrant for employ¬
ment of child-labor.

“ Why,” said the manufacturer, in his astonishment
forgetting that he had just told me his children were all

* The general impression survives with me that the children’s teeth
were bad, and those of the native-born the worst. Ignorance and neg¬
lect were clearly to blame for most of it, poor and bad food for the rest,
I suppose. I give it as a layman’s opinion, and leave it to the dentist to
account for the bad teeth of the many who are not poor. That is his
business.

THE LITTLE TOILERS

105

of age, “ my dear sir ! would you throw them all out of
work ? ”

It was what I expected. I found out eventually that a
number of the children attended the evening classes in
the Leonard Street Italian School, and there one rainy
night I corralled twenty-three of them, all but one official¬
ly certified under oath to be fourteen or sixteen. But for
the rain I might have found twice the number. The
twenty-three I polled, comparing their sworn age with the
entry in the school register, which the teachers knew to
be correct. This was the result : one was eleven years
old and had worked in the factory a year ; one, also eleven,
had just been engaged and was going for her certificate
that night ; three were twelve years old, and had worked
in the factory from one month to a year ; seven were
thirteen, and of them three had worked in the shop two
years, the others one ; nine were fourteen ; one of them
had been there three years, four others two years, the rest
shorter terms ; one was fifteen and had worked in the
factory three years ; the last and tallest was sixteen
and had been employed in the one shop four years. She
said with a laugh that she had a “ certificate of sixteen ”
when she first went there. Not one of them all was of
legal age when she went to work in the shop, under the
warrant of her parents’ oath. The majority were not
even then legally employed, since of those who had passed
fourteen there were several who could not read simple
sentences in English intelligibly ; yet they had been at
work in the factory for months and years. One of the
eleven-year workers, who felt insulted somehow, said
spitefully that “ I needn’t bother, there was lots of other
girls in the shop younger than she.” I have no doubt
she was right. I should add that the firm was a highly

106

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

respectable one, and its members of excellent social stand¬
ing.

I learned incidentally where the convenient certificates
came from, at least those that were current in that school.
They were issued, the children said, free of charge, by a
benevolent undertaker in the ward. I thought at first
that it was a bid for business, or real helpfulness. The
neighborhood undertaker is often found figuring sugges¬
tively as the nearest friend of the poor in his street, when
they are in trouble. But I found out afterward that it
was politics combined with business. The undertaker was
an Irishman and an active organizer of his district. Un¬
political notaries charged twenty -five cents for each certifi¬
cate. This one made them out for nothing. All they had
to do was to call for them. The girls laughed scornfully
at the idea of there being anything wrong in the transac¬
tion. Their parents swore in a good cause. They needed
the money. The end conveniently justified the means in
their case. Besides “ they merely had to touch the pen.”
Evidently, any argument in favor of education could
scarcely be expected to have effect upon parents who thus
found in their own ignorance a valid defence against an
accusing conscience as well as a source of added revenue.

My experience satisfied me that the factory law has had
little effect in prohibiting child labor in the factories of
Kew York City, although it may have had some in stim¬
ulating attendance at the night schools. The census fig¬
ures, when they appear, will be able to throw no valua¬
ble light on the subject. The certificate lie naturally
obstructs the census as it does the factory law. The one
thinor that is made perfectly clear by even such limited
inquiry as I have been able to make, is that a birth certifi¬
cate should be substituted for the present sworn warrant,

THE LITTLE TOILERS

107

if it is intended to make a serious business of the prohi¬
bition. In the piles upon piles of these which I saw, I
never came across one copy of the birth registry. There
are two obstacles to such a change. One is that our birth
returns are at present incomplete ; the other, that most of
the children are not born here. Concerning the first, the
Registrar of Vital Statistics estimates that he is registering
nearly or quite a thousand births a month less than actually
occur in Hew York ; but even that is a great improvement
upon the record of a few years ago. The registered birth¬
rate is increasing year by year, and experience has shown
that a determination on the part of the Board of Health
to prosecute doctors and midwives who neglect their duty
brings it up with a rush many hundreds in a few weeks.
A wholesome strictness at the Health Office on this point
would in a short time make it a reliable guide for the
Factory Inspector in the enforcement of the law. The
other objection is less serious than it appears at first sight.
Immigrants might be required to provide birth certificates
from their old homes, where their children are sure to be
registered under the stringent laws of European govern¬
ments. But as a matter of fact that would not often be
necessary. They all have passports in which the name
and ages of their children are set down. The claim that
they had purposely registered them as younger to cheapen
transportation, which they would be sure to make, need
not be considered seriously. One lie is as good and as
easy as another.

Another lesson we may learn with advantage from
some old -country governments, which we are apt to look
down upon as “ slow,” is to punish the parents for the
truancy of their children, whether they are found running
in the street or working in a shop when they should have

108

THE CHILDKEN OF THE POOH

been at school. Greed, the natural child of poverty,
often has as much to do with it as real need. In the case
of the Italians and the Jewish girls it is the inevitable
marriage-portion, without which they would stand little
chance of getting a husband, that dictates the sacrifice.
One little one of twelve in a class in the Leonard Street
School, who had been working on coats in a sweat-shop
nine months, and had become expert enough to earn three
dollars a week, told me that she had $200 in bank, and
that her sister, also a worker, was as forehanded. Their
teacher supported her story. But often a meaner motive
than the desire to put money in bank forges the child’s
fetters. I came across a little girl in an East Side factory
who pleaded so pitifully that she had to work, and looked
so poor and wan, that I went to her home to see what it
was like. It was on the top floor of a towering tenement.
The mother, a decent German woman, was sewing at the
window, doing her share, while at the table her husband,
a big, lazy lout who weighed two hundred pounds if he
weighed one, lolled over a game of checkers with another
vagabond like himself. A half-empty beer-growler stood
between them. The contrast between that pitiful child
hard at work in the shop, and the big loafer taking his
ease, was enough to make anybody lose patience, and I
gave him the piece of my mind he so richly deserved. But
it rolled off him as water rolls off a duck. He merely
ducked his head, shifted his bare feet under the table, and
told his crony to go on with the play.

It is only when the child rebels in desperation against
such atrocious cruelty and takes to the street as his only
refuge, that his tyrant hands him over to the justice so
long denied him. Then the school comes as an avenger,
not as a friend, to the friendless lad, and it is scarcely to

THE LITTLE TOILERS

109

be wondered at if behind his prison-bars he fails to make
sense of the justice of a world that locks him up and lets
his persecutor go free- — likely enough applauds him for
his public spirit in doing what he did. When the child
ceases to be a source of income because he will not work,
and has to be supported, at the odd intervals at least when
he comes back from the street, the father surrenders him
as a truant and incorrigible. A large number of the
children that are every year sent to the Juvenile Asylum
are admitted in that way. The real animus of it crops out
when it is proposed to put the little prisoner in a way of
growing up a useful citizen by sending him to a home out
of the reach of his grasping relatives. Then follows a
struggle for the possession of the child that would make
the uninitiated onlooker think a gross outrage was about
to be perpetrated on a fond parent. The experienced Su¬
perintendent of the Asylum, who has fought many such
fights to a successful end, knows better. ‘‘In a majority
of these cases,” he remarks in his report for last year, “ the
opposition is due, not to any special interest in the child’s
welfare, but to self-interest, the relative wishing to obtain
a situation for the boy in order to get his weekly wages.”

Little Susie, whose picture I took while she was pasting
linen on tin covers for pocket-flasks— one of the hundred
odd trades, wholly impossible of classification, one meets
with in the tenements of the poor — with hands so deft and
swift that even the flash could not catch her moving arm,
but lost it altogether, is a type of the tenement-house
children whose work begins early and ends late. Her
shop is her home. Every morning she drags down to her
Cherry Street court heavy bundles of the little tin boxes,
much too heavy for her twelve years, and when she has
finished running errands and earning a few pennies that

110 THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

way, takes her place at the bench and pastes two hundred
before it is time for evening school. Then she has earned
sixty cents — “ more than mother,” she says with a smile.
“ Mother ” has been finishing “ knee-pants ” for a sweat-

LITTliE SUSIE AT HER WORK.

er, at a cent and a-quarter a pair for turning up and hem¬
ming the bottom and sewing buttons on ; but she cam
not make more than two and a-half dozen a day, with the
baby to look after besides. The husband, a lazy, good-
natured Italian, who u does not love work well,” in the

THE LITTLE TOILERS

111

patient language of the housekeeper, had been out of a
job, when I last saw him, three months, and there was no
prospect of his getting one again soon, certainly not so
long as the agent did not press for the rent long due.
That was Susie’s doings, too, though lie didn’t know it.
Her sunny smile made everyone and everything, even in
that dark alley, gentler, more considerate, when she was
around.

Of Susie’s hundred little companions in the alley— play¬
mates they could scarcely be called — some made artificial
flowers, some paper-boxes, while the boys earned money
at “ shinin’ ” or selling newspapers. The smaller girls
“ minded the baby,” so leaving the mother free to work.
Most of them did something toward earning the family
living, young as they were. The rest did all the mischief.
The occupations that claim children’s labor in and out of
the shop are almost as numberless as the youngsters that
swarm in tenement neighborhoods. The poorer the tene¬
ments the more of them always. In an evening school
class of nineteen boys and nine girls which I polled once
1 found twelve bo}7s who “ shined,” five who sold papers,
one of thirteen years who by day was the devil in a printing-
office, and one of twelve who worked in a wood-yard. Of
the girls, one was thirteen and worked in a paper-box
factory, two of twelve made paper lanterns, one twelve-
year-old girl sewed coats in a sweat-shop, and one of the
same age minded a push-cart every day. The four small¬
est girls were ten years old, and of them one worked for
a sweater and “ finished twenty-five coats yesterday,” she
said with pride. She looked quite able to do a woman’s
work. The three others minded the baby at home ; one
of them found time to help her mother sew coats when
baby slept,

112

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

I have heard it said that the factory law has resulted in
crowding the children under age into the stores, where
they find employment as “ cash 55 girls and boys, and have
to fear only the truant officer, whose calls are as rare as
angels’ visits. I do not believe this is true to any great
extent. The more general employment of automatic car¬
riers and other mechanical devices for doing the work
once done by the children would alone tend to check such
a movement, if it existed. The Secretary of the Working
Women’s Society, who has made a study of the subject,
estimates that there are five thousand children under
fourteen years so employed all the year round. In the
holiday season their number is much larger. ^Native-born
children especially prefer this work, as the more genteel
and less laborious than work in the factories. As a mat¬
ter of fact it is, I think, much the hardest and the more
objectionable of the two kinds, and not, as a rule, nearly
as well paid. If the factory law does not drive the chil¬
dren from the workshops, it can at least punish the em¬
ployer who exacts more than ten hours a day of them
there, or denies them their legal dinner hour. In the store
there is nothing to prevent their being worked fifteen and
sixteen hours during the busy season. Few firms allow
more than half an hour for lunch, some even less. The
children cannot sit down when tired, and their miserable
salaries of a dollar and a-half or two dollars a week are
frequently so reduced by fines for tardiness as to leave
them little or nothing. The sanitary surroundings are
often most wretched. At best the dust-laden atmosphere
of a large store, with the hundreds of feet tramping
through it and the many pairs of lungs breathing the air
over and over again, is most exhausting to a tender child.
An hour spent in going through such a store tires many

THE LITTLE TOILERS

113

grown persons more than a whole day’s work at their ac~
customed tasks. These children spend their whole time
there at the period when the growth of the body taxes all
their strength.

An effort was made last year to extend the prohibition
of the factory law to the stores, but it failed. It ought
not to fail this winter, but if it is to. be coupled with the
sworn certificate, it were better to leave things as they are.
The five thousand children under age are there now in de¬
fiance of one law that requires them to go to school. They
lied to get their places. They will not hesitate to lie to
keep them. The royal road is provided by the certificate
plan. Beneficent undertakers will not be wanting to
smooth the way for them.

There is still another kind of employment that absorbs
many of the boys and ought to be prohibited with the
utmost rigor of the law. I refer to the messenger service
of the District Telegraph Companies especially. Anyone
can see for himself how old some of these boys are who
carry messages about the streets every day ; but everybody
cannot see the kind of houses they have to go to, the kind
of people they meet, or the sort of influences that beset
them hourly at an age when they are most easily impressed
for good or bad. If that were possible, the line would be
drawn against their employment rather at eighteen than
at sixteen or fourteen. At present there is none except
the fanciful line drawn against truancy, which, to a boy
who has learned the tricks of the telegraph messenger, is
very elastic indeed.

To send the boys to school and see that they stay there
until they have learned enough to at least vote intelligently
when they grow up, is the bounden duty of the State —
celebrated in theory but neglected in practice. If it did
8

114

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

its duty much would have been gained, but even then the
real kernel of this question of child labor would remain
untouched. The trouble is not so much that the children
have to work early as with the sort of work they have to
do. It is, all of it, of a kind that leaves them, grown to
manhood and womanhood, just where it found them,

knowing no more, and
therefore less, than
when they began, and
with the years that
should have prepared
them for life’s work
gone in hopeless and
profitless drudgery.
How large a share of
the responsibility for
this failure is borne by
the senseless and wick¬
ed tyranny of so-called
organized labor, in de¬
nying to our own chil¬
dren a fair chance to
learn h o n e s t trades,
while letting foreign
workmen in in shoals
to crowd our market
under the plea of the
“ solidarity of labor ” — a policy that is in a fair way of
losing to labor all the respect due it from our growing
youth, I shall not here discuss. The general result was
well put by a tireless worker in the cause of improving the
condition of the poor, who said to me, “ They are down on
the scrub level ; there you find them and have to put them

THE LITTLE TOILERS

115

to such use as you can. They don’t know anything else,
and that is what makes it so hard to find work for them.
Even when they go into a shop to sew, they come out
mere machines, able to do only one thing, which is a small
part of the whole they do not grasp. And thus, without
the slightest training for the responsibilities of life, they
marry and transmit their incapacity to another generation
that is so much worse to start off with.” She spoke of the
girls, but what she said fitted the boys just as well. The
incapacity of the mother is no greater than the ignorance
of the father in the mass of such unions. Ignorance and
poverty are the natural heritage of the children.

I have in mind a typical family of that sort which
our relief committee wrestled with a whole summer, in
Poverty Gap. Suggestive location ! The man found his
natural level on the island, where we sent him first thing.
The woman was decent and willing to work, and the girls
young enough to train. But Mrs. Murphy did not get on.
“ She can’t even hold a flat-iron in her hand,” reported
her first employer, indignantly. The children were sent
to good places in the country, and repaid the kindness
shown them by stealing and lying to cover up their thefts.
They were not depraved ; they were simply exhibiting the
fruit of the only training they had ever received — that of
the street. It was like undertaking a job of original cre¬
ation to try to make anything decent or useful out of
them.

I confess I had always laid the blame for this discour¬
aging feature of the problem upon our general industrial
development in a more or less vague way — steam, ma¬
chinery, and all that sort of thing — until the other day I
met a man who gave me another view of it altogether. lie
was a manufacturer of cheap clothing, a very intelligent

116

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

and successful one at that ; a large employer of cheap
Hebrew labor and, heaven save the mark ! — a Christian.
Ilis sincerity was unquestionable. He had no secrets to
keep from me. He was in the business to make money,
he said with perfect frankness, and one condition of his
making money was, as he had had occasion to learn
when he was himself a wage-worker and a union man, to
keep his workmen where they were at his mercy. He
had some four hundred hands, all Jewish immigrants,
all working for the lowest wages for which he could hire
them. Among them all there was not one tailor capable
of making a whole garment. His policy was to keep
them from learning. He saw to it that each one was kept
at just one thing — sleeves, pockets, buttonholes — some
small part of one garment, and never learned anything
else.

“ This I do,” he explained, “to prevent them from going
on strike with the hope of getting a job anywhere else.
They can’t. They don’t know enough. Hot only do we
limit them so that a man who has worked three months
in my shop and never held a needle before is just as valua¬
ble to me as one I have had five years, but we make the
different parts of the suit in different places and keep
Christians over the hands as cutters so that they shall have
no chance to learn.”

Where we stood in his shop, a little boy was stacking
some coats for removal. The manufacturer pointed him
out. “How,” he said, “this boy is not fourteen years
old, as you can see as well as I. His father works here
and when the Inspector comes I just call him up. He
swears that the boy is old enough to work, and there the
matter ends. What would you ? Is it not better that he
should be here than on the street? Bah!” And this

THE LITTLE TOILERS

117

successful Christian manufacturer turned upon his heel
with a vexed air. It was curious to hear him, before I
left, deliver a homily on the “immorality” of the
sweat-shops, arraigning them severely as “ a blot on hu*
inanity.”

CHAPTEK VII.

THE TRUANTS OF OUR STREETS

ON my way to the office the other day, I came upon
three boys sitting on a beer-keg in the mouth of a
narrow alley intent upon a game of cards. They were
dirty and “ tough.” The bare feet of the smallest lad
were nearly black with dried mud. His hair bristled, un¬
restrained by cap or covering of any kind. They paid no
attention to me when I stopped to look at them. It was
an hour before noon.

“ Why are you not in school ? ” I asked of the oldest
rascal. He might have been thirteen.

“ "Cause,” he retorted calmly, without taking his eye
off his neighbor’s cards, “ ’cause I don’t believe in it. Go
on, Jim ! ”

I caught the black-footed one by the collar. “And
you,” I said, “ why don’t you go to school ? Don’t you
know you have to ? ”

The boy thrust one of his bare feet out at me as an
argument there was no refuting. “ They don’t want me ;
I aint got no shoes.” And he took the trick.

I had heard his defence put in a different way to the
same purpose more than once on my rounds through the
sweat-shops. Every now and then some father, whose
boy was working under age, would object, “We send
the child to school, as the Inspector says, and there is no
room for him. What shall we do ? ” He spoke the whole

THE TRUANTS OF OUR STREETS

119

truth, likely enough ; the boy only half of it. There was
a charity school around the corner from where he sat
struggling manfully with his disappointment, where they
would have taken him, and fitted him out with shoes in
the bargain, if the public school rejected him. If anything
worried him, it was probably the fear that I might know
of it and drag him around there. I had seen the same
thought working in the tailor’s mind. Neither had any
use for the school; the one that his boy might work, the
other that he might loaf and play hookey.

Each had found his own flaw in our compulsory edu¬
cation law and succeeded. The boy was safe in the street
because no truant officer had the right to arrest him
at sight for loitering there in school - hours. His only
risk was the chance of that functionary’s finding him at
home, and he was trying to provide against that. The
tailor’s defence was valid. With a law requiring — com¬
pelling is the word, but the compulsion is on the wrong
tack — all children between the ages of eight and fourteen
years to go to school at least one-fourth of the year or a
little more ; with a costly machinery to enforce it, even
more costly to the child wTho falls under the ban as a
truant than to the citizens who foot the bills, we should
most illogically be compelled to exclude, by force if they
insisted, more than fifty thousand of the children, did
they all take it into their heads to obey the law. We
have neither schools enough nor seats enough in them.
As it is, we are spared that embarrassment. They don’t
obey it.

This is the way the case stands : Computing the school
population upon the basis of the Federal census of 1880
and the State census of 1892, we had in New York, in the
summer of 1891, 351,330 children between five and four-

120

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

teen* years. I select these limits because children are ad¬
mitted to the public schools under the law at the age of five
years, and the statistics of the Board of Education show
that the average age of the pupils entering the lowest pri¬
mary grade is six years and five months. The whole num¬
ber of different pupils taught in that year was 196,307.t
The Catholic schools, parochial and select, reported a total
of 35,055 ; the corporate schools (Children’s Aid Society’s,
Orphan Asylums, American Female Guardian Society’s,
etc.), 23,276; evening schools, 29,165; Nautical School,
111 ; all other private schools (as estimated by Superin¬
tendent of Schools Jasper), 15,000; total, 298,914; any
possible omissions in this list being more than made up for
by the thousands over fourteen who are included. So that
by deducting the number of pupils from the school popula¬
tion as given above, more than 50,000 children between
the aeres of five and fourteen are shown to have received
no schooling whatever last year. As the public schools
had seats for only 195,592, while the registered attendance
exceeded that number, it follows that there was no room
for the fifty thousand had they chosen to apply. In fact,
the year before, 3,783 children had been refused admission
at the opening of the schools after the summer vacation
because there were no seats for them. To be told in the
same breath that there were more than twenty thousand
unoccupied seats in the schools at that time, is like add¬
ing insult to injury. Though vacant and inviting pupils
they were worthless, for they were in the wrong schools.
Where the crowding of the growing population was

* The fourteenth year is included. The census phrase means “ up
to 15.”

f The average attendance was only 186,413, so that there were 60,000
who were taught only a small part of the time.

THE TRUANTS OF OUR STREETS

121

greatest and the need of schooling for the children most
urgent, every seat was taken. Those who could not travel
far from home — the poor never can — in search of an edu¬
cation had to go without.

The Department of Education employs twelve truant
officers, who in 1891 “ found and returned to school”
2,701 truants. There is a timid sort of pretence that this
was “ enforcing the compulsory education law,” though it
is coupled with the statement that at least eight more
officers are needed to do it properly, and that they should
have power to seize the culprits wherever found. Super¬
intendent Jasper tells me that he thinks there are only
about 8,000 children in New York who do not go to school
at all. But the Department’s own records furnish con¬
vincing proof that he is wrong, and that the 50,000 estimate
is right. That number is just about one-seventh of the
whole number of children between five and fourteen years,
as stated above. In January of this year a school-census of
the Fourth and Fifteenth wards,* two widely separated
localities, differing greatly as to character of population,
gave the following result: Fourth Ward, total number of
children between five and fourteen years, 2,016 ;f of whom
297 did not go to school. Fifteenth Ward, total num¬
ber of children, 2,276 ; number of non-attendants, 339.
In each case the proportion of non-attendants was nearly
one-seventh, curiously corroborating the estimate made by
me for the whole city.

Testimony to the same effect is borne by a different set
of records, those of the reformatories that receive the tru¬
ants of the city. The Juvenile Asylum, that takes most

* See Minutes of Stated Session of the Board of Education, February
3, 1892.

t Meaning evidently in this case “ up to fourteen.”

122

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

of those of the Protestant faith, reports that of 28,745
children of school age committed to its care in thirty-nine
years 32 per cent, could not read when received. The
proportion during the last five years was 23 per cent.

SHOOTING CRAPS” IN THE HALL OF THE NEWSBOYS’ LODGING HOUSE.

At the Catholic Protectory, of 3,123 boys and girls cared
for during the year 1891, 689 were utterly illiterate at the
time of their reception and the education of the other
2,434 was classified in various degrees between illiterate

THE TRUANTS OF OUR STREETS

123

and “ able to read and write ” only.* The moral status
of these last children may be inferred from the statement
that 739 of them possessed no religious instruction at
all when admitted. The analysis might be extended,
doubtless with the same result as to illiteracy, through¬
out the institutions that harbor the city’s dependent
children, to the State Reformatory, where the final pro¬
duct is set down in 75 per cent, of “ grossly ignorant ”
inmates, in spite of the fact that more than that proportion
is recorded as being of “ average natural mental capacity.”
In other words, they could have learned, had they been
taught.

How much of this bad showing is due to the system, or
the lack of system, of compulsory education, as we know
it in Hew York, I shall not venture to say. In such a sys¬
tem a truant school or home would seem to be a logical
necessity. Because a boy does not like to go to school, he
is not necessarily bad. It may be the fault of the school
and of the teacher as much as of the boy. Indeed, a good
many people of sense hold that the boy who has never
planned to run away from home or school does not amount
to much. At all events, the boy ought not to be classed
with thieves and vagabonds. But that is what New York
does. It has no truant home. Its method of dealing
with the truant is little less than downright savagery.
It is thus set forth in a report of a special committee of
the Board of Education, made to that body on November
18, 1891. “ Under the law the truant agents act upon

reports received from the principals of the schools. After
exhausting the persuasion that they may be able to exer¬
cise to compel the attendance of truant children, and in
cases which seem to call for the enforcement of the law,
* Report of New York Catliolic Protectory, 1892.

124

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

the agent procures the indorsement of the President of the
Board of Education and the Superintendent of Schools
upon his requisition for a warrant for the arrest of the
truant, which warrant, under the provisions of the law,
is then issued by a Police Justice. A policeman is then
detailed to make the arrest, and when apprehended the
truant is brought to the Police Court, where his parents
or guardians are obliged to attend. Should it happen that
the latter are not present, the boy is put in a cell to await
their appearance. It has sometimes happened that a pub¬
lic-school boy, whose only offence against the law was his
refusal to attend school, has been kept in a cell two or
three days with old criminals pending the appearance of
his parents or guardians.* While we fully realize the im¬
portance of enforcing the laws relating to compulsory ed¬
ucation, we believe that bringing the boys into associa¬
tions with criminals in this way and making it necessary
for parents to be present under such circumstances, is un¬
just and improper, and that criminal associations of this
kind in connection with the administration of the truancy
laws should not be allowed to continue. The Justice
may, after hearing the facts, commit the child, who, in a
majority of cases, is between eight and eleven years old,
to one of the institutions designated by law. We do not
think that the enforcement of the laws relating to compul¬
sory education should at any time enforce association with
criminal classes.”

But it does, all the way through. The “ institutions des¬
ignated by law ” for the reception of truants are chiefly
the Protectory and the Juvenile Asylum. In the thirty-
nine years of its existence the latter has harbored 11,636

* If this were not the sober statement of public officials of high re
pute it would seem fairly incredible.

THE TRUANTS OF OUR STREETS

125

children committed to it for disobedience and truancy.
And this was the company they mingled with there on a
common footing : “ Unfortunate children,” 8,806 ; young
thieves, 3,097 ; vagrants, 3,173 ; generally bad boys and
girls, 1,390 ; beggars, 542 ; children committed for ped¬
dling, 51 ; as witnesses, 50. Of the whole lot barely a
hundred, comprised within the last two items, might be
supposed to be harmless, though there is no assurance that
they were. Of the Protectory children I have already
spoken. It will serve further to place them to say that
nearly one-third of the 941 received last year were home¬
less, while fully 35 per cent, of all the boys suffered when
entering from the contagious eye disease that is the scourge
of the poorest tenements as of the public institutions that
admit their children. I do not here take into account the
House of Refuge, though that is also one of the institu¬
tions designated by law for the reception of truants, for
the reason that only about one-fifth of those admitted to
it last year came from New York City. Their number
was 55. The rest came from other counties in the State.
But even there the percentage of truants to those com¬
mitted for stealing or other crimes was as 53 to 47.

This is the “ system,” or one end of it — the one where
the waste goes on. The Committee spoken of reported
that the city paid in 1890, $63,690 for the maintenance
of the truants committed by magistrates, at the rate of
$110 for every child, and that two truant schools and a
home for incorrigible truants could be established and
maintained at less cost, since it would probably not be nec¬
essary to send to the home for incorrigibles more than 25
per cent, of all. It further advised the creation of the
special office of Truant Commissioner, to avoid dragging
the children into the police courts. In his report for the

126

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

present year Superintendent Jasper renews in substance
these recommendations. But nothing has been done.

The situation is this, then, that a vast horde of fifty
thousand children is growing up in this city whom our
public school does not and cannot reach ; if it reaches
them at all it is with the threat of the jail. The mass of
them is no doubt to be found in the shops and factories,
as I have shown. A large number peddle newspapers or
black boots. Still another contingent, much too large,
does nothing but idle, in training for the penitentiary.
I stopped one of that kind at the corner of Baxter and
Grand Streets one day to catechise him. It was in the
middle of the afternoon when the schools were in ses¬
sion, but while I purposely detained him with a long talk
to give the neighborhood time to turn out, thirteen
other lads of his age, all of them under fourteen, gathered
to listen to my business with Gracclio. When they had
become convinced that I was not an officer they frankly
owned that they were all playing hookey. All of them
lived in the block. How many more of their kind it
sheltered I do not know. They were not exactly a nice
lot, but not one of them would I have committed to the
chance of contact with thieves with a clear conscience. I
should have feared especial danger from such contact in
their case.

As a matter of fact the record of average attendance
(136,413) shows that the public schooler se reaches little
more than a third of all the children. And even those it
does not hold Ions; enough to do them the ^ood that was in-
tended. The Superintendent of Schools declares that the
average age at which the children leave school is twelve or
a little over. It must needs be, then, that very many quit
much earlier, and the statement that in Hew York, as in

THE TRUANTS OF OUR STREETS

127

Chicago, St. Louis, Brooklyn, New Orleans, and other
American cities, half or more than half the scliool-boys
leave school at the age of eleven (the source of the state¬
ment is unknown to me) seems credible enough. I am not
going to discuss here the value of school education as a
preventive of crime. That it is, so far as it goes, a posi¬
tive influence for good I suppose few thinking people
doubt nowadays. Dr. William T. Harris, Federal Com¬
missioner of Education, in an address delivered before the
National Prison Association in 1890, stated that an inves¬
tigation of the returns of seventeen States that kept a
record of the educational status of their criminals showed
the number of criminals to be eight times as large from
the illiterate stratum as from an equal number of the pop¬
ulation that could read and write. That census was taken
in 1870. Ten years later a canvass of the jails of Michi¬
gan, a State that had an illiterate population of less than
five per cent., showed exactly the same ratio, so that I
presume that may safely be accepted.

In view of these facts it does not seem that the showing
the public school is making in New York is either cred¬
itable or safe. It is not creditable, because the city’s
wealth grows even faster than its population,* and there is
no lack of means with which to provide schools enough
and the machinery to enforce the law and fill them. Not
to enforce it because it would cost a great deal of money
is wicked waste and folly. It is not safe, because the
school is our chief defence against the tenement and the
flood of ignorance with which it would swamp us. Pro¬
hibition of child labor without compelling the attendance

* Between 1880 and 1890 the increase in assessed value of the real
and personal property in this city was 48.30 per cent., while the popula¬
tion increased 41.06 per cent.

128

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

at school of the freed slaves is a mockery. The children
are better off working than idling, any day. The physi¬
cal objections to the one alternative are vastly outweighed
by the moral iniquities of the other.

I have tried to set forth the facts. They carry their
own lesson. The then State Superintendent of Education,
Andrew Draper, read it aright when, in his report for
1889, he said about the compulsory education law :

“ It does not go far enough and is without an executor.
It is barren of results. ... It may be safely said that
no system will be effectual in bringing the unfortunate
children of the streets into the schools which at least does
not definitely fix the age within which children must at¬
tend the schools, which does not determine the period of
the year within which all must be there, which does not
determine the method for gathering all needed information,
which does not provide especial schools for incorrigible
cases, which does not punish people charged with the care
of children for neglecting their education, and which does
not provide the machinery and officials for executing the
system.”

CHAPTER VIII.

WHAT IT IS THAT MAKES BOYS BAD

I AM reminded, in trying to show up the causes that
go to make children bad, of the experience of a certain
sanitary inspector who was laboring with the proprietor
of a seven-cent lodging-house to make him whitewash and
clean up. The man had reluctantly given in to several of
the inspector’s demands ; but, as they kept piling up, his
irritation grew, until at the mention of clean sheets he
lost all patience and said, with bitter contempt, “Well!
you needn’t tink dem’s angels ! ”

They were not — those lodgers of his — they were tramps.
Neither are the children of the street angels. If, once in a
while, they act more like little devils the opportunities we
have afforded them, as I have tried to show, hardly give us
the right to reproach them. They are not the kind of oppor¬
tunities to make angels. And yet, looking the hundreds
of boys in the Juvenile Asjdum over, all of whom were
supposed to be there because they were bad (though, as I
had occasion to ascertain, that was a mistake — it was the
parents that were bad in some cases), I was struck by the
fact that they were anything but a depraved lot. Except
as to their clothes and their manners, which were the man¬
ners of the street, they did not seem to be very different
in looks from a like number of boys in any public school.
Fourth of July was just then at hand, and when I asked
the official who accompanied me how they proposed to
9

130

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

celebrate it, he said that they were in the habit of march¬
ing in procession up Eleventh Avenue to Fort George,
across to Washington Bridge, and all about the neighbor¬
hood, to a grove where speeches were made. Remember¬
ing the iron bars and high fences I had seen, I said some¬
thing about it being unsafe to let a thousand young
prisoners go at large in that way. The man looked at
me in some bewilderment before he understood.

“ Bless you, no ! ” he said, when my meaning dawned
upon him. “ If any one of them was to run away that
day he would be in eternal disgrace with all the rest. It
is a point of honor with them to deserve it when they are
trusted. Often we put a boy on duty outside, when he
could walk off, if he chose, just as well as not ; but he will
come in in the evening, as straight as a string, only,
perhaps, to twist his bed-clothes into a rope that very
night and let himself down from a third-story window,
at the risk of breaking his neck. Boys will be boys, you
know.”

But it struck me that boys whose honor could be
successfully appealed to in that way were rather the
victims than the doers of a grievous wrong, being in that
place, no matter if they had stolen. It was a case of mis¬
direction, or no direction at all, of their youthful energies.
There was one little fellow in the Asylum band who was
a living illustration of this. I watched him blow his horn
with a supreme effort to be heard above the rest, growing
redder and redder in the face, until the perspiration
rolled off him in perfect sheets, the veins stood out swollen
and blue and it seemed as if he must burst the next minute.
He was a tremendous trumpeter. I was glad when it was
over, and patted him on the head, telling him that if lie
put as much vim into all he had to do, as he did into his

WHAT IT IS THAT MAKES BOYS BAD

131

horn, he would come to something great yet. Then it
occurred to me to ask him what he was there for.

“’Cause I was lazy and played hookey,” he said, and
joined in the laugh his answer raised. The idea of that
little body, that fairly throbbed with energy, being sent to
prison for laziness was too absurd for anything.

The report that comes from the Western Agency of the
Asylum, through which the boys are placed out on farms,
that the proportion of troublesome children is growing
larger does not agree with the idea of laziness either, but
well enough with the idleness of the street, which is
what sends nine-tenths of the boys to the Asylum. Satan
finds plenty of mischief for the idle hands of these lads to
do. The one great point is to give them something to do
— something they can see the end of, yet that will keep
them busy right along. The more ignorant the child, the
more urgent this rule, the shorter and simpler the lesson
must be. Over in the Catholic Protectory, where they
get the most ignorant boys, they appreciate this to the
extent of encouraging the boys to a game of Sunday base¬
ball rather than see them idle even for the briefest spell.
Of the practical wisdom of their course there can be no
question.

“I have come to the conclusion,” said a well-known
educator on a recent occasion, “that much of crime is a
question of athletics.” From over the sea the Earl of
Meath adds his testimony : “ Three-fourths of the youth¬
ful rowdyism of large towns is owing to the stupidity,
and, I may add, cruelty, of the ruling powers in not find¬
ing some safety-valve for the exuberant energies of the
boys and girls of their respective cities.” For our neglect
to do so in New York we are paying heavily in the main¬
tenance of these costly reform schools. I spoke of the

132

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

chance for romping and play where the poor children
crowd. In a Cherry Street hall-way I came across this
sign in letters a foot long : “ Is o ball-playing, dancing,
card-playing, and no persons but tenants allowed in the
yard.” It was a five-story tenement, swarming with chil¬
dren, and there was another just as big across that yard.
Out in the street the policeman saw to it that the ball¬
playing at least was stopped, and as for the dancing,
that, of course, was bound to collect a crowd, the most
heinous offence known to him as a preserver of the peace.
How the peace was preserved by such means I saw on the
occasion of my discovering that sign. The business that
took me down there was a murder in another tenement
just like it. A young man, hardly more than a boy, was
killed in the course of a midnight “can-racket” on the
roof, in which half the young people in the block had a
hand night after night. It was their outlet for the “ ex-
uberant energies ” of their natures. The safety-valve was
shut, with the landlord and the policeman holding it
down.

It is when the wrong outlet has thus been forced that
the right and natural one has to be reopened with an ef¬
fort as the first condition of reclaiming the boy. The
play in him has all run to “ toughness,” and has first to be
restored. “We have no great hope of a boy’s reforma¬
tion,” writes Mr. William F. Round, of the Burnham In¬
dustrial Farm, to a friend who has shown me his letter,
“ till he takes an active part and interest in out-door
amusements. Plead with all your might for play-grounds
for the city waifs and school-children. When the lungs
are freely expanded, the blood coursing with a bound
through all veins and arteries, the whole mind and body
in a state of high emulation in wholesome play, there is

W IT AT IT IS THAT MAKES BOYS BAD

183

no time or place for wicked thought or consequent wicked
action and the body is growing every moment more able
to help in the battle against temptation when it shall
come at other times and places. Next time another tran¬
sit company asks a franchise make them furnish tickets
to the parks and suburbs to all school-children on all holi¬
days and Saturdays, the same to be given out in school for
regular attendance, as a method of health promotion and
a preventive of truancy.” Excellent scheme ! If we could
only make them. It is five years and over now since we
made them pass a law at Albany appropriating a million
dollars a year for the laying out of small parks in the
most crowded tenement districts, in the Mulberry Street
Bend for instance, and practically we stand to-day where
we stood then. The Mulberry Street Bend is still there,
with no sign of a park or play-ground other than in the
gutter. When I asked, a year ago, why this was so, I was
told by the Counsel to the Corporation that it was because
“ not much interest had been taken ” by the previous ad¬
ministration in the matter. Is it likely that a corporation
that runs a railroad to make money could be prevailed
upon to take more interest in a proposition to make it
surrender part of its profits than the city’s sworn officers
in their bounden duty? Yet let anj’one go and see for
himself what effect such a park has in a crowded tenement
district. Let him look at Tompkins Square Park as it is
to-day and compare the children that skip among the
trees and lawns and around the band-stand with those that
root in the gutters only a few blocks off. That was the
way they looked in Tompkins Square twenty years ago
when the square was a sand-lot given up to rioting and
disorder. The police had their hands full then. I re¬
member being present when they had to take the square

134

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

by storm more than once, and there is at least one captain
on the force to-day who owes his promotion to the part he
took and the injuries he suffered in one of those battles.
To-day it is as quiet and orderly a neighborhood as any in
the city. Not a squeak has been heard about “ bread or
blood ” since those trees were planted and the lawns and
flower-beds laid out. It is not all the work of the mis¬
sions, the kindergartens, and Boys’ clubs and lodging-
houses, of which more anon ; nor even the larger share.
The park did it, exactly as the managers of the Juvenile
Asylum appealed to the sense of honor in their prisoners.
It appealed with its trees and its grass and its birds to
the sense of decency and of beauty, undeveloped but not
smothered, in the children, and the whole neighborhood
responded. One can go around the whole square that
covers two big blocks, nowadays, and not come upon a
single fight. 1 should like to see anyone walk that dis¬
tance in Mulberry Street without running across half a
dozen.

Thus far the street and its idleness as factors in mak¬
ing criminals of the boys. Of the factory I have spoken.
Certainly it is to be preferred to the street, if the choice
must be between the two. Its offence is that it makes a
liar of the boy and keeps him in ignorance, even of a use¬
ful trade, thus blazing a wide path for him straight to the
prison gate. The school does not come to the rescue ; the
child must come to the school, and even then is not sure
of a welcome. The trades’ unions do their worst for the
boy by robbing him of the slim chance to learn a trade
which the factory left him. Of the tenement I have said
enough. Apart from all other considerations and influ¬
ences, as the destroyer of character and individuality
everywhere, it is the wickedest of all the forces that at-

WHAT IT IS THAT MAKES BOYS BAD 135

tack the defenceless child. The tenements are increasing
in number, and so is “ the element that becomes criminal
because of lack of individuality and the self-respect that
comes with it.” *

I am always made to think in connection with this subject
of a story told me by a bright little woman of her friend’s
kittens. There was a litter of them in the house and a
jealous terrier dog to boot, whose one aim in life was to
get rid of its mewing rivals. Out in the garden where the
children played there was a sand-heap and the terrier’s
trick was to bury alive in the sand any kitten it caught
unawares. The children were constantly rushing to the
rescue and unearthing their pets ; on the day when my
friend was there on a visit they were too late. The first
warning of the tragedy in the garden came to the ladies
when one of the children rushed in, all red and excited,
with bulging eyes. “ There,” she said, dropping the dead
kitten out of her apron before them, “ a perfectly good
cat spoiled ! ”

Perfectly good children, as good as any on the Avenue,
are spoiled every day by the tenement ; only we have not
done with them then, as the terrier had with the kitten.
There is still posterity to reckon with.

What this question of heredity amounts to, whether in
the past or in the future, I do not know. I have not had
opportunity enough of observing. No one has that I know
of. Those who have had the most disagree in their con¬
clusions, or have come to none. I have known numerous
instances of criminality, running apparently in families for
generations, but there was always the desperate environ¬
ment as the unknown factor in the make-up. Whether

* Philosophy of Crime and Punishment, by Dr. William T. Harris,
Federal Commissioner of Education.

136

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

that bore the greatest share of the blame, or whether the
reformation of the criminal to be effective should have be¬
gun with his grandfather, I could not tell. Besides, there
was always the chance that the great-grandfather, or some
one still farther back, of whom all trace was lost, might
have been a paragon of virtue, even if his descendant was
a thief, and so there was no telling just where to begin. In
general I am inclined to think with such practical philan¬
thropists as Superintendent Barnard, of the Five Points
House of Industry, the Manager of the Children’s Aid So¬
ciety, Superintendent E. Fellows Jenkins, of the Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and Mr. Israel
C. Jones, who for more than thirty years was in charge of
the House of Befuge, that the bugbear of heredity is not
nearly as formidable as we have half taught ourselves to
think. It is rather a question of getting hold of the child
early enough before the evil influences surrounding him
have got a firm grip on him. Among a mass of evidence
quoted in support of this belief, perhaps this instance, re¬
lated by Superintendent Jones in The Independent last
March, is as convincing as any :

Thirty years ago there was a depraved family living ad¬
jacent to what is now a part of the city of Hew York.
The mother was not only dishonest, but exceedingly in¬
temperate, wholly neglectful of her duties as a mother,
and frequently served terms in jail until she finally died.
The father was also dissipated and neglectful. It was a
miserable existence for the children.

Two of the little boys, in connection with two other
boys in the neighborhood, were arrested, tried, and found
guilty of entering a house in the daytime and stealing. In
course of time both of these boys were indentured. One
remained in his place and the other left for another part
of the country, where he died. He was a reputable lad.

WHAT IT IS THAT MAKES BOYS BAD

137

The first boy, in one way and another, got a few pen¬
nies together with which he purchased books. After a
time lie proposed to his master that he be allowed to pre¬
sent himself for examination as a teacher. The necessary
consent was given, he presented himself, and was awarded
a “ grade A ” certificate.

Two years from that time he came to the House of
Refuge, as proud as a man could be, and exhibited to me
his certificate. He then entered a law office, diligently
pursued his studies, and was admitted to the bar. He
was made a judge, and is now chief magistrate of the
court in the city where he lives.

His sister, a little girl, used to come to the Refuge
with her mother, wearing nothing but a thin cloak in very
cold weather, almost perishing with the cold. As soon as
this young man got on his feet he rescued the little girl.
He placed her in a school ; she finally graduated from the
Normal School, and to-day holds an excellent position in
the schools in the State where she lives.

The records of the three reformatory institutions be¬
fore mentioned throw their own light upon the question
of what makes criminals of the young. At the Elmira
Reformatory, of more than five thousand prisoners only a
little over one per cent, were shown to have kept good com¬
pany prior to their coming there. One and a half per cent,
are put down under this head as “ doubtful,” while the
character of association is recorded for 41.2 per cent, as
“ not good,” and for 55.9 per cent, as “ positively bad.”
Three-fourths possessed no culture or only the slightest.
As to moral sense, 42.6 per cent, had absolutely none, 35
per cent. “ possibly some.” Only 7.6 per cent, came from
good homes. Of the rest 39.8 per cent, had homes that
are recorded as “ fair only,” and 52.6 per cent, downright
bad homes ; 4.8 per cent, had pauper, and 76.8 per cent,
poor parents ; 38.4 per cent, of the prisoners had drunken

138

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

parents, and 13 per cent, parents of doubtful sobriety.
Of more than twenty-two thousand inmates of the Juve¬
nile Asylum in thirty-nine years one-fourth had either a
drunken father or mother, or both. At the Protectory
the percentage of drunkenness in parents was not quite
one-fifth among over three thousand children cared for in
the institution last year.

There is never any lack of trashy novels and cheap
shows in New York, and the children who earn money
selling newspapers or otherwise take to them as ducks
do to water. They fall in well with the ways of the
street that are showy always, however threadbare may be
the cloth. As for that, it is simply the cheap side of our
national extravagance.

The cigarette, if not a cause, is at least the mean acces¬
sory of half the mischief of the street. And I am not
sure it is not a cause too. It is an inexorable creditor
that has goaded many a boy to stealing ; for cigarettes
cost money, and they do not encourage industry. Of
course there is a law against the cigarette, or rather against
the boy smoking it who is not old enough to work — there
is law in plenty, usually, if that would only make people
good. It don’t in the matter of the cigarette. It helps
make the boy bad by adding the relish of law-breaking to
his enjoyment of the smoke. Nobody stops him.

The mania for gambling is all but universal. Every
street child is a born gambler ; he has nothing to lose and
all to win. He begins by “ shooting craps” in the street
and ends by “ chucking dice ” in the saloon, two names
for the same thing, sure to lead to the same goal. By the
time he has acquired individual standing in the saloon, his
long apprenticeship has left little or nothing for him to
learn of the bad it has to teach. Never for his own sake

WHAT IT IS THAT MAKES BOYS BAD

139

is he turned away with the growler when he comes to have
it filled ; once in a while for the saloon-keeper’s, if that
worthy suspects in him a decoy and a “job.” Just for the
sake of the experiment, not because I expected it to de¬
velop anything new, I chose at random, while writing this
chapter, a saloon in a tenement house district on the East
Side and posted a man, whom I could trust implicitly, at'
the door with orders to count the children under ag-e who
went out and in with beer-jugs in open defiance of law.
Neither he nor I had ever been in or even seen the saloon
before. He reported as the result of three and a half
hours’ watch at noon and in the evening a total of fourteen
— ten boys and a girl under ten years of age, and three
girls between ten and fourteen years, not counting a little
boy who bought a bottle of ginger. It was a cool, damp
day ; not a thirsty day, or the number would probably have
been twice as great. There was not the least concealment
about the transaction in any of the fourteen cases. The
children were evidently old customers.

The law that failed to save the boy while there was
time yet to make a useful citizen of him provides the
means of catching him when his training begins to bear
fruit that threatens the public peace. Then it is with the
same blundering disregard of common sense and common
decency that marked his prosecution as a truant that the
half-grown lad is dragged into a police court and thrust
into a prison-pen with hardened thieves and criminals to
learn the lessons they have to teach him. The one thing
New York needs most after a truant home is a special
court for the trial of youthful offenders only. I am
glad to say that this want seems at last in a way to be
supplied. The last Legislature authorized the establish¬
ment of such a court, and it may be that even as these

140

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

pages see the light this blot upon our city is about to be
wiped out.

Lastly, but not least, the Church is to blame for deserting
the poor in their need. It is an old story that the churches
have moved uptown with the wealth and fashion, leaving the
poor crowds to find their way to heaven as best they could,
and that the crowds have paid them back in their own
coin by denying that they, the churches, knew the way at
all. The Church has something to answer for ; but it is
a healthy sign at least that it is accepting the responsibil¬
ity and professing anxiety to meet it. In much of the
best work done among the poor and for the poor it has
lately taken the lead, and it is not likely that any more of
the churches will desert the downtown field, with the ap¬
proval of Christian men and women at least.

Little enough of the light I promised in the opening
chapter has struggled through these pages so far. We
have looked upon the dark side of the picture ; but there
is a brighter. If the battle with ignorance, with misery,
and with vice has but just begun, if the army that con¬
fronts us is strong, too strong, in numbers still and in mal¬
ice — the gauntlet has been thrown down, the war waged,
and blows struck that tell. They augur victory, for we
have cut off the enemy’s supplies and turned his flank.
As I showed in the case of the immigrant Jews and the
Italians, we have captured his recruits. With a firm grip
on these, we may hope to win, for the rest of the problem
ought to be and can be solved. With our own we should
be able to settle, if there is any virtue in our school and
our system of government. In this, as in all things, the
public conscience must be stirred before the community’s
machinery for securing justice can move. That it has

WHAT IT IS THAT MAKES BOYS BAD

141

been stirred, profoundly and to useful purpose, the multi¬
plication in our day of charities for attaining the ends
the law has failed to reach, gives evidence. Their num¬
ber is so great that mention can be made here merely of
a few of the most important and typical efforts along the
line. A register of all those that deal with the children
especially, as compiled by the Charity Organization So¬
ciety, will be found in an appendix to this book. Before
we proceed to look at the results achieved through en¬
deavors to stop the waste down at the bottom by private
reinforcement of the public school, we will glance briefly
at two of the charities that have a plainer purpose — if I
may so put it without disparagement to the rest — that
look upon the child merely as a child worth saving for its
own sake, because it is helpless and poor and wretched.
Both of them represent distinct departures in charitable
work. Both, to the everlasting credit of our city be it
said, had their birth here, and in this generation, and
from New York their blessings have been carried to the
farthest lands. One is the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Children, known far and near now as the
Children’s Society, whose strong and beneficent plan has
been embodied in the structure of law of half the civilized
nations of the world. The other, always spoken of as the
“Fresh Air Fund,” never had law or structural organiza¬
tion of any kind, save the law of love, laid down on the
Mount for all time ; but the life of that divine command
throbs in it and has touched the heart of mankind wher¬
ever its story has been told.

CHAPTER IX.

LITTLE MARY ELLEN’S LEGACY

OX a thriving farm up in Central Xew York a happy
young wife goes singing about her household work
to-day who once as a helpless, wretched waif in the great
city through her very helplessness and misery stirred up a
social revolution whose waves beat literally upon the
farthest shores. The story of little Mary Ellen moved
Xew York eighteen years ago as it had scarce ever been
stirred by news of disaster or distress before. In the sim¬
ple but eloquent language of the public record it is thus
told : “ In the summer of 1874 a poor woman lay dying
in the last stages of consumption in a miserable little room
on the top floor of a big tenement in this city. A Meth¬
odist missionary, visiting among the poor, found her there
and asked what she could do to soothe her sufferings.
4 My time is short,’ said the sick woman, 4 but I cannot die
in peace while the miserable little girl whom they call
Mary Ellen is being beaten day and night by her step¬
mother next door to my room.’ She told how the screams
of the child were heard at all hours. She was locked in
the room, she understood. It had been so for months,
while she had been lying ill there. Prompted by the
natural instinct of humanity, the missionary sought the
aid of the police, but she was told that it was necessary
to furnish evidence before an arrest could be made. 4 Un¬
less you can prove that an offence has been committed we

LITTLE MARY ELLEN’S LEGACY 143

cannot interfere, and all you know is hearsay.’ Slie next
went to several benevolent societies in the city whose ob¬
ject it was to care for children, and asked their interference
in behalf of the child. The reply was : 4 If the child is
legally brought to us, and is a proper subject, we will take
it ; otherwise we cannot act in the matter.’ In turn then
she consulted several excellent charitable citizens as to
what she should do. They replied : 4 It is a dangerous
thing to interfere between parent and child, and you
might get yourself into trouble if you did so, as parents
are proverbially the best guardians of their own children.’
Finally, in despair, with the piteous appeals of the dying
woman ringing in her ears, she said : 4 1 will make one
more effort to save this child. There is one man in this
city who has never turned a deaf ear to the cry of the
helpless, and who has spent his life in just this work for
the benefit of unoffending animals. I will go to Henry
Bergh.’

“ She went, and the great friend of the dumb brute
found a way. 4 The child is an animal,’ he said, 4 if there
is no justice for it as a human being, it shall at least have
the rights of the stray cur in the street. It shall not be
abused.’ And thus was written the first bill of rights
for the friendless waif the world over. The appearance
of the starved, half-naked, and bruised child when it was
brought into court wrapped in a horse-blanket caused a
sensation that stirred the public conscience to its very
depths. Complaints poured in upon Mr. Bergh ; so many
cases of child-beating and fiendish cruelty came to light
in a little while, so many little savages were hauled forth
from their dens of misery, that the community stood
aghast. A meeting of citizens was called and hn associa¬
tion for the defence of outraged childhood was formed,

144

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

out of which grew the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Children that was formally incorporated in
the following year. By that time Mary Ellen was safe in
a good home. She never saw her tormentor again. The
woman, whose name was Connolly, was not her mother.
She steadily refused to tell where she got the child, and
the mystery of its descent was never solved. The wretched
woman was sent to the Island and forgotten.

John D. Wright, a venerable Quaker merchant, was
chosen the first President of the Society. Upon the orig¬
inal call for the first meeting, preserved in the archives of
the Society, may still be read a foot-note in his hand¬
writing, quaintly amending the date to read, Quaker fash¬
ion, “ 12th mo. 15th 1874.” A year later, in his first
review of the work that was before the young society, he
wrote, “ Ample laws have been passed by the Legislature
of this State for the protection of and prevention of cru¬
elty to little children. The trouble seems to be that it
is nobody’s business to enforce them. Existing societies
have as much, nay more to do than they can attend to in
providing for those entrusted to their care. The Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children proposes to en¬
force by lawful means and with energy those laws, not
vindictively, not to gain public applause, but to convince
those who cruelly ill-treat and shamefully neglect little
children that the time has passed when this can be done,
in this State at least, with impunity.”

The promise has been faithfully kept. The old Quaker
is dead, but his work goes on. The good that he did
lives after him, and will live forever. The applause of
the crowd his Society has not always won ; but it has
merited the confidence and approval of all right-thinking
and right-feeling men. Its aggressive advocac}’ of de

LITTLE MARY ELLEN’S LEGACY

145

fenceless childhood, always and everywhere, is to-day
reflected from the statute-books of every State in the
American Union, and well-nigh every civilized government
abroad, in laws that sprang directly from its fearless cru¬
sade.

In theory it had always been the duty of the State to
protect the child “ in person, and property, and in its op¬
portunity for life, liberty, and happiness,” even against a
worthless parent ; in practice it held to the convenient
view that, after all, the parent had the first right to the
child and knew what was best for it. The result in many
cases was thus described in the tenth annual report of the
Society by President Elbridge T. Gerry, who in 1879 had
succeeded Mr. Wright and has ever since been so closely
identified with its work that it is as often spoken of now¬
adays as Mr. Gerry’s Society as under its corporate name :

“ Impecunious parents drove them from their miserable
homes at all hours of the day and night to beg and steal.
They were trained as acrobats at the risk of life and limb,
and beaten cruelly if they failed. They were sent at
night to procure liquor for parents too drunk to venture
themselves into the streets. They were drilled in juvenile
operas and song-and-dance variety business until their
voices were cracked, their growth stunted, and their health
permanently ruined by exposure and want of rest. Num¬
bers of young Italians were imported by padroni under
promises of a speedy return, and then sent out on the
streets to play on musical instruments, to peddle flowers
and small wares to the passers-by, and too often as a cover
for immorality. Their surroundings were those of vice,
profanity, and obscenity. Their only amusements were
the dance-halls, the cheap theatres and museums, and the
saloons. Their acquaintances were those hardened in sin,
and both boys and girls soon became adepts in crime, and
entered unhesitatingly on the downward path. Beaten
10

CASE NO. 25,745 ON THE SOCIETY BLOTTER : ANNIE WOLFF, AGED SEVEN YEARS, AS SHE
WAS DRIVEN FORTH BY HER CRUEL STEP-MOTHER, BEATEN AND STARVED, WITH HER
ARMS TIED UPON HER BACK J AND AS SHE APPEARED AFTER SIX MONTHS IN THE SOCIE¬
TY’S CARE.

LITTLE MARY ELLEN’S LEGACY

147

and abused at home, treated worse than animals, no other
result could be expected. In the prisons, to which sooner
or later these unhappy children gravitated, there was no
separation of them from hardened criminals. Their pre¬
vious education in vice rendered them apt scholars in the
school of crime, and they ripened into criminals as they
advanced in years.”

All that has not been changed in the seventeen years
that have passed ; to remodel depraved human nature has
been beyond the power of the Society ; but step by step un¬
der its prompting the law has been changed and strength¬
ened ; step by step life has been breathed into its dead
letter, until now it is as able and willing to protect the
child against violence or absolute cruelty as the Society
is to enforce its protection. There is work enough for it
to do yet. I have outlined some in the preceding chapters.
In the past year (1891) it investigated 7,695 complaints
and rescued 3,683 children from pernicious surroundings,
some of them from a worse fate than death. “ But let it
not be supposed from this,” writes the Superintendent,
“ that crimes of and against children are on the increase.
As a matter of fact wrongs to children have been ma¬
terially lessened in New York by the Society’s action
and influence during the past seventeen years. Some
have entirely disappeared, having been eradicated root
and branch from New York life, and an influence for
good has been felt by the children themselves, as shown
by the great diminution in juvenile delinquency from
1875, when the Society was first organized, to 1891, the
figures indicating a decrease of fully fifty per cent.” *

Other charitable efforts, working along the same line,
contributed their share, perhaps the greater, to the latter

* Seventeenth Annual Report of Society, 1892.

148

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

result, but the Society’s influence upon the environment
that shapes the childish mind and character, as well as
upon the child itself, is undoubted. It is seen in the hot
haste with which a general cleaning up and setting to
rights is begun in a block of tenement barracks the
moment the “ cruelty man ” heaves in sight ; in the “ holy
horror” the child-beater has of him and his mission, and
in the altered attitude of his victim, who not rarely nowa¬
days confronts his tormentor with the threat, “ if you
do that I will go to the Children’s Society,” always effect¬
ive except when drink blinds the wretch to consequences.

The Society had hardly been in existence four years
when it came into collision with the padrone and his
abominable system of child slavery. These traders in
human misery, adventurers of the worst type, made a
practice of hiring the children of the poorest peasants in
the Neapolitan mountain districts, to serve them begging,
singing, and playing in the streets of American cities.
The contract was for a term of years at the end of which
they were to return the child and pay a fixed sum, a
miserable pittance, to the parents for its use, but, prac¬
tically, the bargain amounted to a sale, except that the
money was never paid. The children left their homes
never to return. They were shipped from Naples to
Marseilles, and made to walk all the way through France,
singing, playing, and dancing in the towns and villages
through which they passed, to a seaport where they em¬
barked for America. Upon their arrival here they were
brought to a rendezvous in some out-of-the-way slum and
taken in hand by the padrone, the partner of the one
who had hired them abroad. He sent them out to play in
the streets by day, singing and dancing in tune to their
alleged music, and by night made them perform in the

LITTLE MARY ELLEN’S LEGACY

149

lowest dens in the city. All the money they made the
padrone took from them, beating and starving them if
they did not bring home enough. None of it ever reached
their parents. Under this treatment the boys grew up
thieves — the girls worse. The life soon wore them out,
and the Potter’s Field claimed them before their term of
slavery was at an end, according to the contract. In far-off
Italy the simple peasants waited anxiously for the return
of little Tomaso or Antonia with the coveted American
gold. No word ever came of them.

The vile traffic had been broken up in England only to
be transferred to America. The Italian government had
protested. Congress had passed an act making it a felony
for anyone knowingly to bring into the United States any
person inveigled or forcibly kidnapped in any other coun¬
try, with the intent to hold him here in involuntary service.
But these children were not only unable to either speak
or understand English, they were compelled, under horri¬
ble threats, to tell anyone who asked that the padrone was
their father, brother, or other near relative. To get the
evidence upon which to proceed against the padrone was
a task of exceeding difficulty, but it was finally accom¬
plished by co-operation of the Italian government with the
Society’s agents in the case of the padrone Ancarola, who,
in November, 1879, brought over from Italy seven boy
slaves, between nine and thirteen years old, with their
outfit of harps and violins. They were seized, and the
padrone, who escaped from the steamer, was arrested in a
Crosby Street groggery five days later. Before a jury in
the United States Court the whole vile scheme was laid
bare. One of the boys testified that Ancarola had paid
his mother 20 lire (about four dollars) and his uncle 60
lire. For this sum he was to serve the padrone four years.

150

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

Ancarola was convicted and sent to the penitentiary. The
children were returned to their homes.

The news travelled slowly on the other side. For years
the padrone’s victims kept coming at intervals, but the
society’s agents were on the watch, and when the last of
the kidnappers was sent to prison in 1885 there was an
end of the business. The excitement attending the trial
and the vigor with which the society had pushed its pur¬
suit of the rascally padrone drew increased attention to
its work. At the end of the following year twenty-four
societies had been organized in other States upon its plan,
and half the governments of Europe were enacting laws
patterned after those of New York State. To-day there
are a hundred societies for the prevention of cruelty to
children in this country, independent of each other but
owning the New York Society as their common parent,
and nearly twice as many abroad, in England, France,
Italy, Spain, the West Indies, South America, Canada,
Australia, etc. The old link that bound the dumb brute
with the helpless child in a common bond of humane
sympathy has never been broken. Many of them include
both in their efforts, and all the American societies,
whether their care be children or animals, are united in
an association for annual conference and co-operation,
called the American Humane Association.

In seventeen years the Society has investigated 61,749
complaints of cruelty to children, involving 185,247
children, prosecuted 21,282 offenders, and obtained 20,697
convictions. The children it has saved and released
numbered at the end of the year 1891 no less than 32,633.
Whenever it has been charged with erring it has been on
the side of mercy for the helpless child. It follows its
charges into the police courts, seeing to it that, if pos-

LITTLE MARY ELLEN’S LEGACY

151

sible, no record of crime is made against the offending
child and that it is placed at once where better environ¬
ment may help bring out the better side of its nature. It
follows them into the institutions to which they are com¬
mitted through its care, and fights their battles there, if
need be, or the battles of their guardians under the law,’
against the greed of parents that would sacrifice the
child’s prospects in life for the sake of the few pennies it
could earn at home. And it generally wins the fight.

The Society has never received any financial support
from the city, but has depended entirely upon private
benevolence. Ample means have always been at its dis¬
posal. Last year it sheltered, fed, and clothed 1,697 chil¬
dren in its rooms. Most of them were the victims of
drunken parents. AVitli the Society they found safe
shelter. “ Sometimes,” Superintendent Jenkins says,
“ the children cry when they are brought here. They
always cry when they go away.”

“ Lastly,” so ran the old Quaker merchant’s address in
his first annual report, “ this Society, so far from inter¬
fering with the numerous societies and institutions already
existing, is intended to aid them in their noble work. It
proposes to labor in the interest of no one religious
denomination, and to keep entirely free from political in¬
fluences of every kind. Its duties toward the children
whom it may rescue will be discharged when the future
custody of them is decided by the courts of justice.”
Before the faithful adherence to that plan all factious or
sectarian opposition that impedes and obstructs so many
other charities has fallen away entirely. Humanity is
the religion of the Children’s Society. In its Board of
D irectors are men of all nationalities and of every creed.
Its fundamental doctrine is that every rescued child must

152

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

be given finally into the keeping of those of its own faith
who will carry on the work begun in its rescue. Beyond
that point the Society does not go. It has once refused
the gift of a sea-side home lest it become a rival in a field
where it would render only friendly counsel and aid.

In the case of the little John Does a doubt arises which
the Society settles by passing them on to the best institu¬
tion available for each particular child, quite irrespective of
sect. There are thirteen of them by this time, waifs found
in the street by the Society’s agents or friends and never
claimed by anybody. Though passed on, in the plan of
the Society from which it never deviates, to be cared for
by others, they are never lost sight of but always consid¬
ered its special charges, for whom it bears a peculiar re¬
sponsibility.

Poor little Carmen, of whom I spoke in the chapter
about Italian children, was one of the Society’s wards.
Its footprints may be found all through these pages. To
its printed reports, with their array of revolting cruelty
and neglect, the reader is referred who would fully under¬
stand what a gap in a Christian community it bridges
over.

CLUB WITH WHICH A FOUR- YEAR-OLD CHILD WAS BRUTALLY BEATEN.

CHAPTER X.

THE STORY OF THE FRESH AIR FUND

THE last echoes of the storm raised by the story of lit¬
tle Mary Ellen had not died in the Pennsylvania hills
when a young clergyman in the obscure village of Sher¬
man preached to his congregation one Sunday morning
from the text, “Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these
my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto me,” a ser¬
mon which in its far-reaching effects was to become one
of the strongest links in the chain of remorseful human
sympathy then being forged in the fires of public indigna¬
tion. Willard Parsons was a man with a practical mind
as well as an open heart. He had lived in the city and
had witnessed the suffering of the poor children in the
stony streets on the hot summer days. Out there in the
country he saw the wild strawberry redden the fields in
June only to be trampled down by the cattle, saw, as the
summer wore on, the blackberry-vines by the wayside
groaning under their burden of sweet fruit, unconsidered
and going to waste, with this starved host scarce a day’s
journey away. Starved in body, in mind, and in soul !
Not for them was the robin’s song they scarcely heard ;
not for them the summer fields or the cool forest shade,
the sweet smell of briar and fern. Theirs was poverty
and want, and heat and suffering and death — death as the
entrance to a life for which the slum had been their only
preparation. And such a preparation !

154

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

All this the young preacher put in his sermon, and as he
saw the love that went out from his own full heart kin¬
dling in the eager faces of his listeners, he told them what
had been in his mind on many a lonely walk through those
fields : that while the flowers and the brook and the trees
might not be taken to the great prison-pen where the
children were, these might be brought out to enjoy them
there. There was no reason why it should not be done,
even though it had not been before. If they were
poor and friendless and starved, yet there had been One
even poorer, more friendless than they. They at least
had their slum. He had not where to lay his head. Well
they might, in receiving the children into their homes, be
entertaining angels unawares. “ Inasmuch as ye did it unto
even the least of these, ye did it unto Me.”

The last hymn had been sung and the congregation had
gone home, eagerly discussing their pastor’s new scheme ;
but a little company of men and women remained behind
in the church to talk it over with the minister. They
were plain people. The sermon had shown them a plain
duty to be done, and they knew only one way : to do it.
The dinner-hour found them there yet, planning and talk¬
ing it over. It was with a light heart that, as a result of
their talk, the minister set out for New York the day
after with an invitation to the children of the slums
to come out in the woods and see how beautiful God
had made his world. They were to be the guests of
the people of Sherman for a fortnight, and a warm
welcome awaited them there. A right royal one they
received when, in a few days, the pastor returned, bring¬
ing with him nine little waifs, the poorest and the need¬
iest he had found in the tenements to which he went
with his offer. They were not such children as the farm-

THE STORY OF THE FRESH AIR FUND 155

folk thereabouts saw every day, but they took them into
their homes, and their hearts warmed to them day by day
as they saw how much they needed their kindness, how
under its influence they grew into bright and happy chil¬
dren like their own ; and when, at the end of the two
weeks, nine brown-faced laughing boys and girls went
back to tell of the wondrous things they had heard and
seen, it was only to make room for another little band.
Nor has ever a summer passed since that first, which wit¬
nessed sixty city urchins made happy at Sherman, that
has not seen the hospitable houses of the Pennsylvania
village opened to receive holiday parties like those from
the slums of the far city.

Thus modestly began the Fresh Air movement that has
brought health and happiness to more than a hundred
thousand of New York’s poor children since, and has
spread far and near, not only through our own but to foreign
lands, wherever there is poverty to relieve and suffering
to soothe. It has literally grown up around the enthu¬
siasm and practical purpose of the one man whose person¬
ality pervades it to this day. Willard Parsons preaches
now to a larger flock than any church could contain, but
the burden of his sermon is ever the same. From the
Tribune office he issues his appeals each spring, and money
comes in abundance to carry on the work in which city
and country vie with each other to lend a hand. After
that first season at Sherman, a New York newspaper, the
Evening Post , took the work under its wing and raised the
necessary funds until in 1882 it passed into the keeping
of its neighbor, the Tribune. Ever since it has been
known as the Tribune Fresh Air Fund, and year by year
has grown in extent and importance until at the end of
the year 1891 more than 94,000 children were shown to

156

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

have been given a two weeks’ vacation in the country in
the fifteen summers that had passed. The original 60 of
1877 had grown to an army of holiday-makers number¬
ing 13,568 in 1891. By this time the hundred thousand
mark has long been passed. The total amount of money
expended in sending the children out was $250,633.88,
and so well had the great fund been managed that the
average cost per child had fallen from $3.12 in the first
year to $2.07 in the last. Generalship, indeed, of the
highest order was needed at the headquarters of this
army. In that summer there was not a day except Sun¬
day when less than seven companies were sent out from
the city. The little knot of children that hung timidly to
the skirts of the good minister’s coat on that memorable
first trip to Pennsylvania had been swelled until special
trains, once of as many as eighteen cars, were in demand
to carry those who came after.

The plan of the Fresh Air Fund is practically unchanged
from the day it was first conceived. The neediest and
poorest are made welcome. Be they Protestants, Cath¬
olics, Jews, or heathen, it matters not if an invitation is
waiting. The supply is governed entirely by the demands
that come from the country. Sometimes it is a Catholic
community that asks for children of that faith, some¬
times prosperous Jews, who would bring sunlight and
hope even to Ludlow Street ; rarely yet Italians seeking
their own. The cry of the missionary, from the slums in
the hot July days : “ How shall we give those babies the
breath of air that means life ? — no one asks for Italian chil¬
dren,” has not yet been answered. Prejudice dies slowly.
When an end has been made of this at last, the Fresh Air
Fund will receive a new boom. To my mind there are
no more tractable children than the little Italians, none

THE STORY OF THE FRESH AIR FUND 157

more grateful for kindness ; certainly none more in need
of it. Against colored children there is no prejudice.
Sometimes an invitation comes from Massachusetts or
some other New England State for them, and then the
missions and schools of Thompson Street give up their
pickaninnies for a gleeful vacation spell. With the first
spring days of April a canvass of the country within a ra¬
dius of five hundred miles of New York has been begun.
By the time the local committees send in their returns —
so many children wanted in each town or district — the
workers from the missions, the King’s Daughters’ circles,
the hospitals, dispensaries, industrial schools, nurseries,
kindergartens, and the other gates through which the chil¬
dren’s host pours from the tenements, are at work, and
the task of getting the little excursionists in shape for
their holiday begins.

That is the hardest task of all. Places are found for
them readily enough ; the money to pay their way is to
be had for the asking ; but to satisfy the reasonable de¬
mand of the country hosts that their little guests shall
come clean from their tenement homes costs an effort,
how great the workers who go among those homes “ with
a Bible in one hand and a pair of scissors and a cake of
soap in the other ” know best. A physician presides over
these necessary preliminaries. In the months of July and
August he is kept running from church to hospital, from
chapel to nursery, inspecting the brigades gathered there
and parting the sheep from the goats. With a list of
the houses in which the health officers report contagious
diseases, he goes through the ranks. Any hailing from
such houses — the list is brought up to date every morn¬
ing — are rejected first. The rest as they pass in review
are numbered 1 and 2 on the register. The No. Is

158

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

are ready to go at once if under the age limit of twelve
years. They are the sheep, and, alas ! few in number.

SUMMER BOARDERS FROM MOTT STREET.

Amid wailing and gnashing of teeth the cleansing of the
goats is then begun. Heads are clipped and faces “ planed
off.” Sometimes a second and a third inspection still

THE STORY OF THE FRESH AIR FUND 159

fails to give the child a clean bill of entry. Just what it
means is best shown by the following extract from a mis¬
sion worker’s report to Mr. Parsons, last summer, of the
condition of her squad of 110, held under marching
orders in an up-town chapel :

“ All the No. 2's have now been thoroughly oiled, lark-
spur’d, washed in hot suds, and finally had an application
of exterminator. This has all been done in the church to
be as sure as possible that they are safe to send away.
Ninety have been thus treated.” Her experience was typi¬
cal. Twenty No. l’s in a hundred was the average given
by one of the oldest workers in the Fresh Air Service
whose field is in the East Side tenements.

But all this is of the past, as are the long braids of
many a little girl, sacrificed with tears upon the altar
of the coveted holiday, when the procession finally starts
for the depot, each happy child carrying a lunch-bag,
for often the journey is long, though never wearisome
to the little ones. Their chaperon — some student, mis¬
sionary, teacher, or kind man or woman who, for sweet
charity’s sake, has taken upon him this arduous duty —
awaits them and keeps the account of his charges as
squad after squad is dropped at the station to which it is
consigned. Sometimes the whole party goes in a lump to
a common destination, more frequently the joyous freight
is delivered, as the journey progresses, in this valley or
that village, where wagons are waiting to receive it and
carry it home.

Once there, what wondrous things those little eyes be¬
hold, whose horizon was limited till that day, likely
enough, by the gloom of the filthy court, or the stony street
upon which it gave, with the gutter the boundary line be¬
tween ! The daisies by the roadside, with no sign to warn

160

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

them “ off the grass,” the birds, the pig in its sty, the cow
with its bell — each new marvel is hailed with screams
of delight. “ Sure, heaven can’t be no nicer place than
this,” said a little child from one of the missions who for
the first time saw a whole field of daisies ; and her fellow-
traveller, after watching intently a herd of cows chew the
cud asked her host, “ Say, mister, do you have to buy gum
for all them cows to chew ? ”

The children sent out by the Fresh Air Fund go as
guests always. No penny of it is spent in paying for
board. It goes toward paying their way only. Most of
the railroad companies charge only one-fourth of the reg
ular fare for the little picnickers up to the maximum of
$3.50; beyond that they carry them without increase
within the five hundred mile limit. Last year Mr. Par¬
sons’ wards were scattered over the country from the
White Mountains in the East to Western Pennsylvania,
from the lakes to West Virginia. New Hampshire,
Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, New York, New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia were
hosts, and Canada entertained one large party. Ohio and
North Carolina were on the list of entertainers, but the
way was too long for the children. The largest party
that went out comprised eleven hundred little summer
boarders.

Does any good result to the children ? The physical
effect may be summed up in Dr. Daniel’s terse statement,
after many years of practical interest in the work : “I
believe the Fresh Air Fund is the best plaster we have
for the unjust social condition of the people.” She spoke
as a doctor, familiar with the appearance of the children
when they went out and when they came back. There
are not wanting professional opinions showing most re-

THE STORY OF THE FRESH AIR FUND 161

markable cures to have resulted from even this brief res¬
pite from the slum. The explanation is simple : it was
the slum that was the real complaint ; with it the cause
was removed and improvement came with a bound. As
to the moral and educational effect, Mr. Parsons thus an¬
swers a clergyman who objected that “ it will only make
the child discontented with the surroundings where God
placed him : ”

“ I contend that a great gain has been made if you can
only succeed in making the tenement-house child thor¬
oughly discontented with his lot. There is some hope
then of his getting out of it and rising to a higher plane.
The new life he sees in the country, the contact with good
people, not at arm’s length, but in their homes ; not at
the dinner, feast, or entertainment given to him while the
giver stands by and looks dowri to see how he enjoys it,
and remarks on his forlorn appearance ; but brought into
the family and given a seat at the table, where, as one boy
wrote home, ‘ I can have two pieces of pie if I want, and
nobody says nothing if I take three pieces of cake ; ’ or,
as a little girl reported, where ‘ We have lots to eat, and
so much to eat that we could not tell you how much we
get to eat.’

“ This is quite a different kind of service, and has re¬
sulted in the complete transformation of many a child.
It has gone back to its wretchedness, to be sure, but in
hundreds of instances about which I have personally
known, it has returned with head and heart full of new
ways, new ideas of decent living, and has successfully
taught the shiftless parents the better way.”

The host’s side of it is presented by a pastor in
Northern New York, whose people had entertained a
hundred children : “ They have left a rich blessing be¬

ll

162

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

hind them,” he wrote, “ and they actually gave more than
they received. They have touched the hearts of the peo¬
ple and opened the fountains of love, sympathy, and char¬
ity. The people have read about the importance of benev¬
olence, and have heard many sermons on the beauty of
charity ; but these have been quickly forgotten. The
children have been an object-lesson that will long live in
their hearts and minds.”

Not least among the blessings of the Fresh Air work
has been the drawing closer in a common interest and
sympathy of the classes that are drifting farther and far¬
ther apart so fast, as wealth and poverty both increase with
the growth of our great cities. Each year the invitations
to the children have come in greater numbers. Each year
the fund has grown larger, and as }7et no collector has ever
been needed or employed. “ I can recall no community,”
says Mr. Parsons, “ where hospitality has been given once,
but that some children have been invited back the follow¬
ing years.” In at least one instance of which he tells, the
farmer’s family that nursed a poor consumptive girl back
to health and strength did entertain an angel unawares.
They were poor themselves in their way, straining every
nerve to save enough to pay interest on a mortgage and
thus avert the sale of their farm. A wealthy and philan¬
thropic lady, who became interested in the girl after her
return from her six weeks’ vacation, heard the story of
their struggle and saved the farm in the eleventh hour.

What sort of a gap the Fund sometimes bridges over
the following instance from its report for 1891 gives a
feeble idea of : “ Something less than a year ago a boy

from this family fell out of an upper-story window and
was killed. Later on, a daughter in the same family like¬
wise fell out of a window, sustaining severe injuries, but she

THE STORY OF THE FRESH AIR FUND 163

is still alive. About this same time a baby came and the
father had to quit work and stay at home to see that all
was well with the mother. By the time she was well, the
father was stricken down with a fever. On his recovery
he went to hunt another job. On the first day at work a
brick fell off a scaffold and fractured his skull. That
night the Tribune Fresh Air Fund came to the rescue
and relieved the almost distracted mother by sending four
of her children to the country for two weeks. The little
ones made so many good friends that the family is now
well provided for.”

From Mr. Parsons’ record of “cases” that have multi¬
plied in fifteen years until they would fill more than one
stout volume, this one is taken as a specimen brick :

In the earlier days of the work a bright boy of ten was
one of a company invited to Schoharie County, N. Y. He
endeared himself so thoroughly to his entertainers, who
“ live in a white house with green blinds and Christmas-
trees all around it,” that they asked and received permis¬
sion to keep the lad permanently. The following is an
exact copy of a part of the letter he wrote home after he
had been for a few months in his new home :

Dear mother : i am still to Mrs. D - and i was so

Busy that i Could not Write Sooner i drive the horses and
put up the Cows and clean out the Cow Stable i am all
well i pick stones and i have an apple tree 6 Feet High
and i have got a pair of new pants and a new Coat and a

pair of Suspenders and Mr. D - is getting a pair of Kew

Boots made for me We killed one pig and one Cow i am
going to plow a little piece of land and plant Some Corn.

When Mr. D - killed the Cow i helped and Mr. D -

had to take the Cow skin to be taned to make leather and

Mr. D - gave the man Cow skin for leather to make me

Boots i am going to school to-morrow and I want to tell

164

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

lizzie — pauline — Charlie — Christie — maggie — george and
you to all write to me and if they all do when Christmas
Comes i will send all of you something nice if my uncle
frank comes to see yous you must tell him to write to me
i Close my letter

From your oldest son A - .

A year after that time the mother died. Some time
afterward an uncle began writing for the lad to come back
to the city — he coveted his small earnings. But the little
fellow had sense enough to see that he was better off where
he was. Finally the uncle went after the boy, and told
him his brother was dying in the hospital, and was calling
constantly for him. Under such circumstances his foster
parents readily gave him permission to return with the
uncle for a visit. Before they reached the city the uncle
told him he should never go back. He sent him to work
at Eleventh Avenue and Twenty-ninth Street, in a work¬
room situated in the cellar, and his bedroom, like those in
most tenement houses, had no outside window. The third
day he was sent up-stairs on an errand, and as soon as he
saw the open door he bolted. He remembered that a car
that passed Fourth Street and Avenue C would take him
to the People’s Line for Albany. He ran with all his
might to Fourth Street, and then followed the car-tracks
till he saw on the large flag “ People’s Line.” He told
part of his story to the clerk, and finally added, “ I am one
of Mr. Parsons’ Fresh- Air boys and I have got to go to
Albany.” That settled the matter, and the clerk readily
gave him a pass. A gentleman standing by gave him a
quarter for his supper. He held on to his appetite as
well as his quarter, and in the morning laid his twenty-
five cents before the ticket agent at Albany, and called for
a ticket to B - , a small place fifty miles distant. He

THE STORY OF THE FRESH AIR FUND 165

got the ticket. After a few miles’ walk from R - he

reached his new home safely, and there he proposed to
stay. He said he would take to the woods if his uncle
came after him again. This happened ten years ago.

About a year ago a letter came from the young fellow,
lie is now an active Christian, married, and worth prop¬
erty, and expects in a few years to have his farm all paid
for.

A hundred benevolent enterprises have clustered about
the Fresh Air Fund as the years have passed, patterning
after it and accepting help from it to carry out their own
plans. Churches provide excursions for their poor children
and the Fund pays the way. Vacations for working girls,
otherwise out of reach, are made attainable by its inter¬
vention. An independent feature is the Tribune Day
Excursion that last summer gave nearly thirty thousand
poor persons, young and old, a holiday at a beautiful grove
on the Hudson, with music and milk to their hearts’ desire.
The expense was borne by a wealthy citizen of this city,
who gave boats, groves, and entertainment free of charge,
stipulating only that his name should not be disclosed.

Other cities have followed the example of New York.
Boston and Philadelphia have their “ Country Week,”
fashioned after the Fresh Air Fund idea. Chicago, St.
Louis, Cincinnati, and other cities clear to San Francisco
have sent committees to examine its workings, and depu¬
tations have come from Canada, from London and Man¬
chester, where the holiday work is doing untold good and
is counted among the most useful of philanthropic efforts.
German, Austrian, and Italian cities have fallen into
line, and the movement has spread even to the Sandwich
Islands. Yet this great work, as far as New York, where
it had its origin, is concerned, has never had organization

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

or staff of officers of any sort. Three well-known citizens
audit Mr. Parsons’ accounts once a year. The rest he
manages and always has managed himself. “The con¬
stitution and by-laws,” he says, drily, “ are made and
amended from day to day as required, and have yet to be
written.” The Fresh Air Fund rests firmly upon a strong¬
er foundation than any human law or enactment. Its
charter was written in the last commandment that is the
sum of all the rest : “ That ye love one another.”

The method of the Fresh Air Fund was and is its
great merit. Its plan, when first presented, was unique.
There had been other and successful efforts before that to
give the poor in their vile dwellings an outing in the dog
days, but they took the form rather of organized charities
than of this spontaneous outpouring of good-will and fel¬
lowship between brother and brother : “ My house and
my home are yours; come and see me!” The New
York Times had conducted a series of free excursions, and
three summers before Mr. Parsons preached his famous
sermon, the Children’s Aid Society, that had battled for
twenty years with the slum for the possession of the
child, had established a Health Home down the Bay, to
which it welcomed the children from its Industrial schools
and the sick babies that were gathered in by its visiting
physicians. This work has grown steadily in extent and
importance with the new interest in the poor and their
lives that has characterized our generation. To-day the
Society conducts a Summer Home at Bath Beach where
the girls are given a week’s vacation, and the boys *a day’s
outing ; a cottage for crippled girls, and at Coney Island
a Health Home for mothers with sick children. Sick
and well, some ten thousand little ones were reached by
them last year. The delight of a splash in the “ big

THE STORY OF THE FRESH AIR FUND 167

water” every day is the children’s at Bath. Two hundred
at a time, the boys plunge in headlong and strike out man¬

fully for the Jersey shore, thirteen miles away ; but the
recollection of the merry-go-round with the marvellous
wooden beasts, the camera obscura, the scups, and the fly-

168

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

ing machine on shore, not to mention the promised lemon¬
ade and cake, makes them turn back before yet they have
readied the guard-boat where they cease to touch bottom.
The girls, less boisterous, but quite as happy, enjoy the
sight of the windmill “ where they make the wind that
makes it so nice and cool,” the swings and the dinner,
rarely forgetting, at first, after eating as much as they can
possibly hold, to hide something away for their next meal,
lest the unexampled abundance give out too soon. That
it should last a whole week seems to them too unreason¬
able to risk.

At the Health Home more than eighteen hundred sick
babies were cared for last year. They are carried down,
pale and fretful, in their mother’s arms, and at the end
of the week come back running at her side. The effect of
the sea-air upon a child sick with the summer scourge of
the tenements, cholera infantum, is little less than miracu¬
lous. Even a ride on a river ferryboat is often enough to
put life into the weary little body again. The salt breeze
no sooner fans the sunken cheeks than the fretful wail is
hushed and the baby slumbers, quietly, restfully, to wake
with a laugh and an appetite, on the way to recovery.
The change is so sudden that even the mother is often de¬
ceived and runs in alarm for the doctor, thinking that the
end is at hand.

Scores of such scenes are witnessed daily in the floating
hospital of St. John’s Guild, the great marine cradle that
goes down the Bay every week-day, save Saturday, in July
and August, with hundreds upon hundreds of wailing
babies and their mothers. Twice a week it is the west-
siders’ turn ; on three days it gathers its cargo along the
East Biver, where crowds with yellow tickets stand anx¬
iously awaiting its arrival. The floating hospital carries

FLOATING HOSPITAL— ST. JOHN’S GUILD.

THE STORY OF THE FRESH AIR FUND 171

its own staff of physicians, including a member of the
Health Department’s corps of tenement doctors, who is on
the lookout for chance contagion. The summer corps is
appointed by the Health Board upon the approach of hot
weather and begins a systematic canvass of the tenements
immediately after the Fourth of July, followed by the
King’s Daughters’ nurses, who take up the doctor’s work
where he had to leave it. With his prescription pad he
carries a bunch of tickets for the Floating Hospital, and
the tickets usually give out first. Any illness that is not
contagious is the baby’s best plea for admission. It never
pleads in vain, unless it be well and happy, and even then
it is allowed to go along, if there is no other way for the
mother to get off with its sick sister. For those who need
more than one day’s outing, the Guild maintains a Seaside
hospital, three hours’ sail down the Bay, on Staten Island,
where mother and child may remain without a cent of
charge until the rest, the fresh air, and the romp on the
beach have given the baby back health and strength. Op¬
posite the hospital, but out at sea where the breeze has
free play over the crowded decks, the great hospital barge
anchors every day while the hungry hosts are fed and the
children given a salt-water bath on board.

St. John’s Guild is not, as some have supposed from its
name, a denominational charity. It is absolutely neutral
in matters of sect and religion, leaving the Church to take
care of the soul while it heals the body of the child. It
is so with the Bartholdi Creche on Randall’s Island, in the
shadow of the city’s Foundling Hospital, that ferries chil¬
dren over the river for a romp on the smooth, green
lawns, on presentation of a ticket with the suggestive
caution printed on the back that “ all persons behaving
rudely or taking liberties will be sent back by the first

172

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

boat.” “ The Little Mothers ” Aid Society follows the
same plan in reaching out for the little home worker
whose work never ends, the girl upon whom falls the
burden and responsibility of caring for the perennial baby
when scarcely more than a baby herself, often even the
cooking and all the rest of the housework so that the mother
may have her own hands free to help earn the family liv¬
ing. These little slaves the Society drums up, “ hires ” the
baby attended in a nursery if need be, and carries the lit¬
tle mother off for a day in the woods up at Pelham Bay
Park where the Park Commisioners have set a house on
the beach apart for their use in the summer months.
There was much opposition to this plan at first among the
East Side Jews, whose children needed the outing more
sorely than any other class ; but when a few of the more
venturesome had come back well-fed, in clean clothes,
whereas they went out in rags, and reported that they
had escaped baptism, the sentiment of Ludlow Street un¬
derwent a change, and so persistent were the raids made
upon the Society’s chaperones after that that they had to
take another route for awhile, lest their resources should
be swamped in a single trip. The United Hebrew Chari¬
ties, like many other relief societies with a special field,
provide semi-weekly excursions for the poorest of their
own people, and maintain a sea- side sanitarium for the
sick children.

There is no lack of fresh air charities nowadays. Their
number is increasing year by year and so is their helpful¬
ness, though it has come to a pass where it is necessary to
exercise some care to prevent them from lapping over, as
Sunday School Christmas-trees have been known to do,
and opening the way for mischief. There can be no doubt
that their civilizing influence is great. It could hardly be

THE STORY OF THE FRESH AIR FUND 173

otherwise, with the same lessons of cleanliness and de¬
cency enforced year after year. The testimony is that there
is an improvement ; the children come better “ groomed ”
for inspection. The lesson has reached the mother and
the home. The subtler lesson of the flowers, the fields,
the sky, and the sea, and of the kindness that asked no
reward, has not been lost either. One very striking fact
this charity has brought out that is most hopeful. It
emphasizes the difference I pointed out between the mater¬
ial we have here to work upon in these children and that
which is the despair of philanthropists abroad, in England
for instance. We are told of children there who, coming
from their alleys into the field, “ are able to feel no touch
of kinship between themselves and Mother Nature ” * when
brought into her very presence. Not so with ours. They
may “guess” that the sea is salt because it is full of cod¬
fish; may insist that the potatoes are home-made “ cause I
seen the garding ; ” both of which were actual opinions
expressed by the Bath Beach summer boarders ; but the
interest, the sympathy, the hearty appreciation of it, is
there always, the most encouraging symptom of all. Down
in the worst little ruffian’s soul there is, after all, a tender
spot not yet pre-empted by the slum. And Mother
Nature touches it at once. They are chums on the
minute.

* English. Social Movements, by Robert Archey Woods, page 196.

CHAPTER XI.

THE KINDERGARTENS AND NURSERIES

IF the influence of an annual cleaning up is thus dis¬
tinctly traced in the lives of the children, what must
be the effect of the daily teaching of the kindergarten, in
which soap is alwTays the moral agent that leads all the
rest ? I have before me the inventory of purchases for a
single school of this kind that was started a year ago in a
third loft of a Suffolk Street tenement. It included
several boxes of soap and soap-dislies, 200 feet of rope, 10
bean-bags, 24 tops, 200 marbles, a box of chalk, a base¬
ball outfit for indoor use, a supply of tiddledywinks and
“ sliced animals,” and 20 clay pipes. The pipes were not
for lessons in smoking, but to smooth the way for a closer
acquaintance with the soap by the friendly intervention of
the soap-bubble. There were other games and no end of
colored paper to cut up, the dear delight of childhood, but
made in the hands and under the eyes of the teacher to
train eye and hand while gently but firmly cementing
the friendship ushered in by the gorgeous bubble. No
wonder, with such a stock, a mother complained that she
had to whip her Jimmie to keep him home.

Without a doubt the kindergarten is one of the longest
steps forward that has yet been taken in the race with
poverty ; for in gathering in the children it is gradually,
but surely, conquering also the street with its power for
mischief. There is only one force that, to my mind,

THE KINDERGARTENS AND NURSERIES 175

exerts an even stronger influence upon the boys’ lives es¬
pecially ; I mean the club, of which I shall speak pres¬
ently. But that comes at a later stage. The kindergarten
begins at the very beginning, and in the best of all ways,
with the children’s play. What it does, counts at both
ends on that tack. Very soon it makes itself felt in the
street and in what goes on there, as anyone can see for
himself by observing the children’s play in a tenement
neighborhood where there is a kindergarten and again
where there is none, while by imperceptibly turning the
play into work that teaches habits of observation and of
industry that stick, it builds a strong barrier against the
doctrine of the slum that the world owes one a living,
which lies in ambush for the lad on every grog-shop cor¬
ner. And all corners in the tenement districts are grog¬
shop corners. Beyond all other considerations, beyond its
now admitted function as the right beginning of all educa¬
tion, whether of rich or poor, its war upon the street stands
to me as the true office of the kindergarten in a city like
New York, with a tenement-house population of a million
and a quarter souls.* The street itself owns it, with
virtual surrender. Hostile as its normal attitude is to
every new agency of reform, the best with the worst, I
have yet to hear of the first instance in which a kinder¬
garten has been molested by the toughest neighborhood,
or has started a single dead cat on a post-mortem career
of window-smashing, whether it sprang from Christian,
Jewish, or heathen humanity. There is scarce a mission
or a boy’s club in the city that can say as much.

The kindergarten is no longer an experiment in New

* The Superintendent of the House of Refuge for thirty years wrote
recently : “ It is essential to have the plays of the children more care¬
fully watched thap their work. ’’

176

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

York. Probably as many as a hundred are to-day in
operation, or will be when the recently expressed purpose
of the Board of Education to make the kindergarten a
part of the public school system has been fully carried out.
The Children’s Aid Society alone conducts a dozen in con¬
nection with its industrial schools, and the New York
Kindergarten Association nine, if its intention of opening
two new schools by the time this book is in the printer’s
hands is realized. There is no theology, though there is a
heap of religion in most of them. Protestants, Catholics,
Jews, Theosophists, and Ethical Culturists, if I may so call
them, men of one or of various opinions, or of none, con¬
cerning the hereafter, alike make use of the kindergarten
as a means of reaching and saving the shipwrecked of the
present. Sometimes the Sunday School is made to serve
as a feeder for the kindergarten, or the kindergarten for
the Sunday School. Sometimes the wisdom that wrests
success from doubt and perplexity is expressed in the fun¬
damental resolution that the kindergarten “ shall not be a
Sunday School.” The system is the same in all cases with
very little change. “ We have tried it and seen it tried
with various kinks and variations,” said one of the old
managers of the Children’s Aid Society to me, “ but after
all there is only one way, the way of the great kinder-
gartner who said, ‘ We learn by doing.’”

A clean face is the ticket of admission to the kinder¬
garten. A clean or whole frock is wisely not insisted
upon too firmly at the start ; torn or dirty clothes are
not so easily mended as a smudged face, but the kin¬
dergarten reaches that too in the end, and by the same
road as the Fresh Air scrubbing — the home. Once
he is let in, the child is in for a general good time
that has little of school or visible discipline to frighten

THE kindergartens and nurseries 177

him. He joins in the ring for the familiar games, de¬
lighted to find that the teacher knows them too, and
can be “It” and his “fair lady” in her turn. He does
not notice the little changes the game has undergone,

PLATING AT HOUSEKEEPING.

the kindergarten touch here and there that lifts it out of
the mud ; but the street does presently, when the new
version is transferred to it, and is the better for it. Af¬
ter the game there are a hundred things for him to do
that do not seem like work in the least. Between thread¬
ing colored beads, cutting and folding pink and green
12

178

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

papers in all sorts of odd ways, as boats and butterflies
and fancy baskets ; moulding, pasting, drawing, weaving
and blowing soap-bubbles when all the rest has ceased to
hold his attention, the day slips by like a beautiful dream,
and he flatly refuses to believe that it is gone when the
tenement home claims him again. Not infrequently he
goes home howling, to be found the next morning waiting
at the door an hour before the teacher comes. Little
Jimmie’s mother says that he gets up at six o’clock to go
to the Fifty-first Street kindergarten, and that she has to
whip him to make him wait until nine.

The hours pass with happy play that slowly but surely
moulds head, hand, and heart together. The utmost free¬
dom is allowed, but it stops short of the license of the
street. Its law of violence is replaced by the law of love.
The child learns to govern himself. Not at once ; I ob¬
served two or three black eyes during a tour of a half¬
score kindergartens, last June, that showed that the street
yielded its reign reluctantly. During my visit to the East
Sixty-third Street school I became interested in a little
fellow who was its special pet and the ward of the Alumnae
of the Normal college, who through the New York Kin¬
dergarten Association had established and maintained the
school. Johnny was a sweet little fellow, one of eight
children from a wretched tenement home down the street
into which the kindergartner had found her wray. The
youngest of the eight was a baby that was getting so big
and heavy that it half killed the mother to drag it around
when she went out working, and the father, with a consid¬
eration for her that was generously tempered with lazi¬
ness, was considering the advisability of staying home to
take care of it himself, “ so as to give her a show.” There
was a refinement of look and manner, if not of dress,

THE KINDERGARTENS AND NURSERIES 179

about little Johnny after lie was washed clean, that made
the tenement setting seem entirely too plebeian for him,
and his rescuers had high hopes of his future. I regret
to say that I saw the pet, before I left, deliberately knock
the smallest baby in the school down, and when he was
banished from the ring in consequence and condemned to
take his howling playmate over in the corner and show
her pictures until he repented, take an unworthy revenge
by pinching her surreptitiously until she howled louder.
Worse than that, when the baby had finally been com¬
forted with a headless but squeaking toy sheep, he secretly
pulled the insides and the ba-a out of the lambkin through
its broken neck, when no one was looking. I was told
that Johnny was believed to have the making of a diplo¬
mat in his little five-year-old body, and I think it very
likely — of a politician anyway.

While this was going on, another boy, twice as large as
Johnny, had been temporarily exiled from the ring for
clumsiness. It was even more hopelessly constitutional, to
all appearances, than Johnny’s Machiavelian cunning. In
the game he had persistently stumbled over his own feet.
Made to take a seat at the long table, he fell off his chair
twice in one minute from sheer embarrassment. In lu¬
minous contrast to his awkwardness was the desperate
agility of a little Irishman I had just left in another kin¬
dergarten. Each time he was told to take his seat, which
was about every ten seconds, he would perform the feat
with great readiness by climbing over the back of the
chair as a dog climbs over a fence, to the consternation of
the teacher, whose reproachful “O Alexander ! ” he dis¬
armed with a cheerful “ I’m all right, Miss Brown,” and
an offer to shake hands.

Let it not be inferred from this that the kindergarten

180

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

is the home of disorder. Just the reverse. Order and
prompt obedience are the cardinal virtues taught there,
but taught in such a way as to make the lesson seem all
fun and play to the child. It sticks all the better. It is
the province of the kindergarten to rediscover, as it were,
the natural feelings the tenement had smothered. But
for its appeal, the love of the beautiful might slumber in
those children forever. In their homes there is nothing to
call it into life. The ideal of the street is caricature, bur¬
lesque, if nothing worse. Under the gentle training of
the kindergartner the slumbering instinct blossoms forth
in a hundred different ways, from the day the little one
first learns the difference between green and red by string¬
ing colored beads for a necklace “for teacher,” until later
on he is taught to make really pretty things of pasteboard
and chips to take home for papa and mamma to keep.
And they do keep them, proud of the child — who would
not? — and their influence is felt where mayhap there was
darkness and dirt only before. So the kindergarten
reaches directly into the home, too, and thither follows
the teacher, if she is the right kind, with encouragement
and advice that is not lost either. No door is barred
against her who comes in the children’s name. In the
truest and best sense she is a missionary to the poor.

[Nearly all the kindergartens in this city are crowded.
Many have scores of applicants upon the register whom
they cannot receive. There are no truants among their
pupils. All of the New York Kindergarten Association’s
schools are crowded, and new are added as fast as the
necessary funds are contributed. The Association was or¬
ganized in the fall of 1889 with the avowed purpose of
engrafting the kindergarten upon the public school sys¬
tem of the city, through persistent agitation. There had

THE KINDERGARTENS AND NURSERIES 181

been no official recognition of it up till that time. The
Normal School kindergarten was an experiment not
countenanced by the School Board. The Association has
now accomplished its purpose, but its work, far from be¬
ing ended, has but just begun. It is doubtful if all the
kindergartens in the city, including those now in the public
schools, accommodate much more than five or six thousand
children, if that number. The last sanitary census showed
that there were 160,708 children under five years old in
the tenements. At least half of these are old enough to
be in a kindergarten, and ought to be, seeing how little
schooling they will get after they outgrow it. That leaves
in round numbers 75,000 children yet to be so provided
for in New York’s tenements. There is no danger that the
kindergarten will become too “ common ” in this city for
a while yet. As an adjunct to the public school in pre¬
paring the young minds for more serious tasks, it is admit¬
ted by teachers to be most valuable. But its greatest
success is as a jail deliverer. “ The more kindergartens
the fewer prisons ” is a saying the truth of which the gen¬
eration that comes after us will be better able to grasp
than we.

The kindergarten is the city’s best truant officer. Not
only has it no truants itself, but it ferrets out a lot who are
truants from necessity, not from choice, and delivers them
over to the public school. There are lots of children who
are kept at home because someone has to mind the baby
while father and mother earn the bread for the little
mouths. The kindergarten steps in and releases these
little prisoners. If the baby is old enough to hop around
with the rest, the kindergarten takes it. If it can only
crawl and coo, there is the nursery annex. Sometimes it
is an independent concern. Almost every church or

182

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

charity that comes into direct touch with the poor has
nowadays its nursery where poor mothers may leave their
children to be cared for while they are out working. Re¬
lief more practical could not be devised. A small fee,
usually five cents, is charged as a rule for each baby.
Pairs come cheaper, and three go for ten cents at the
nursery in the Wilson mission. Over 50,000 babies were
registered there last year, which meant, if not 5,000 sep¬
arate children, at least 5,000 days’ work and wages to poor
mothers in dire need of both, and a good, clean, healthy
start for the infants, a better than the tenement could
have given them. To keep them busy, when the rock¬
ing-horse and the picture-book have lost their charm, the
kindergarten grows naturally out of the nursery, where
that was the beginning, just as the nursery stepped in to
supplement the kindergarten where that had the lead.
The two go hand in hand. The soap cure is even more
potent in the nursery than in the kindergarten, as a silent
rebuke to the mother, who rarely fails to take the hint.
At the Five Points House of Industry the children who
come in for the day receive a general scrubbing twice a
week, and the whole neighborhood has a cleaner look af¬
ter it. The establishment has come to be known among
the ragamuffins of Paradise Park as “ the school where
dey washes ’em.” Its value as a moral agent may be
judged from the statements of the Superintendent that
some of the children “ cried at the sight of a waslitub,”
as if it were some new and hideous instrument of torture
for their oppression.

Private benevolence in this, as in all measures for the
relief of the poor, has been a long way ahead of public
action ; properly so, though it has seemed sometimes that
we might as a body make a little more haste and try to

THE KINDERGARTENS AND NURSERIES 183

catch up. It lias lately, by the establishment of children’s
play-grounds in certain tenement districts, west and east,
provided a kind of open-air kindergarten that has hit the
street in a vital spot. These play-grounds do not take the
place of the small parks which the city has neglected to
provide, but they show what a boon these will be some day.
There are at present, as far as I know, three of them, not

POVERTY GAPPERS PLAYING CONEY ISLAND.

counting the back-yard “ beaches ” and “ Coney Islands,”
that have made the practical missionaries of the College
Settlement, the King’s Daughters’ Tenement Chapter, and
like helpers of the poor, solid with their little friends. One
of them, the largest, is in Ninety-second Street, on the East
Side, another at the foot of West Fiftieth Street, and still
another in West Twenty-eighth Street, between Tenth and
Eleventh Avenues, the block long since well named Pov-

184

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

erty Gap. Two, three, or half a dozen vacant lots, bor¬
rowed or leased of the owner, have been levelled out,
a few loads of sand dumped in them for the children to
dig in ; scups, swings, and see-saws, built of rough timber;
a hydrant in the corner ; little wheelbarrows, toy-spades
and pails to go round, and the outfit is complete. Two at
least of the three are supported each by a single generous
woman, who pays the salaries of a man janitor and of two
women u teachers ” who join in the children’s play, strike
up “ America ” and the “Star Spangled Banner” when
they tire of “ Sally in our Alley ” and “ Ta-ra-ra-boom-
de-ay,” and by generally taking a hand in what goes on
manage to steer it into safe and mannerly ways.

More than two hundred children were digging, swing¬
ing, see-sawing, and cavorting about the Poverty Gap
playground when I looked in on a hot Saturday afternoon
last July. Long files of eager girls, whose shrill voices used
to make the echoes of the Gap ring with angry clamor,
awaited their turn at the scups, quiet as mice and without
an ill word when they trod upon each other’s toes. The
street that used to swarm with mischievous imps was as
quiet as a church. The policeman on the beat stood swinging
his club idly in the gate. It was within sight of this spot
that the Alley Gang beat one of his comrades half to death
for telling them to go home and let decent people pass ;
the same gang which afterward murdered young Healey
for the offence of being a decent, hard-working lad, who
was trying to support his aged father and mother by his
work. The Healeys lived in one of the rear houses that
stood where the children now skip at their play, and the
murder was done on his doorstep. The next morning I
found the gang camping on a vacant floor in the adjoining
den, as if nothing had happened. The tenants knew the

THE KINDERGARTENS AND NURSERIES 185

toughs were there, but were afraid of betraying them.
All that was only a couple of years ago ; but a marvellous
transformation had been wrought in the Gap. The toughs
were gone, with the old tenements that harbored them.
Poverty Gap itself was gone. A decent flat had taken
the place of the shanty across the street where a ’long¬
shoreman kicked his wife to death in drunken rage. And

POVERTY GAP TRANSFORMED — THE SPOT WHERE YOUNG HEALEY WAS MURDERED
IS NOW A PLAYGROUND.

this play-ground, with its swarms of happy children who
a year ago would have pelted the stranger with mud
from behind the nearest truck — that was the greatest
change of all. The retiring toughs have dubbed it “ Holy
Terror Park ” in memory of what it was, not of what it
is. Poverty Park the policeman called it, with more reason.
It was not exactly an attractive place. A single stunted

186

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

ailanthus tree struggled over the fence of the adjoining
yard, the one green spot between ugly and ragged brick
walls. The “ sand” was as yet all mud and dirt, and the
dust the many little feet kicked up was smothering. But
the children thought it lovely, and lovely it was for Pov¬
erty Gap, if not for Fifth Avenue.

I came back to my office to find a letter there from a
rich man who lives on the Avenue, offering to make an¬
other Poverty Park for the tenement-house children of an¬
other street, if he had to buy the lots. I told him the
story of Poverty Gap and bade him go and see for him¬
self if he could spend his money to better purpose. There
are no play-grounds yet below Fourteenth Street and room
and need for fifty. The Alley and the Avenue could not
meet on a plane that argues better for the understanding
between the two that has been too long and needlessly
delayed.

CHAPTER XII.

THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS

THAT “ dirt is a disease,” and tlieir mission to cure it,
was the new gospel whicli the managers of the Chil¬
dren’s Aid Society carried to the slums a generation ago.
In practice they have not departed from their profession.
Their pill is the Industrial School, their plaster a Western
farm and a living chance in exchange for the tenement
and the city slum. The wonder-cures they have wrought
by such simple treatment have been many. In the execu¬
tive chair of a sovereign State sits to-day a young man
who remembers with gratitude and pride the day they
took him in hand and, of the material the street would
have moulded into a tough, made an honorable man and
a governor. And from among the men whose careers of
usefulness began in the Society’s schools, and who to-day,
as teachers, ministers, lawyers, and editors, are conspicuous
ornaments of the communities, far and near, in which they
have made their homes, he would have no difficulty in
choosing a cabinet that would do credit and honor to his
government. Prouder monument could be erected to no
man’s memory than this record at the grave of the late
Charles Loring Brace, the founder of the Children’s Aid
Society.

The Industrial School plants itself squarely in the gap
between the tenement and the public school. If it does
not fill it, it at least spreads itself over as much of it as it

188

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

can, and in that position demonstrates that this land of
lost or missing opportunities is not the barren ground once
supposed, but of all soil the most fruitful, if properly

THE LATE CHARLES LORING BRACE, FOUNDER OF THE CHILDREN’S AID SOCIETY.

tilled. Wherever the greatest and the poorest crowds are,
there also is the Industrial School. The Children’s Aid
Society maintains twenty-one in seventeen of the city’s
twenty-four wards, not counting twelve evening schools,

THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS

189

five of which are in the Society’s lodging-houses. It is
not alone in the field. The American Female Guardian
Society conducts twelve such day schools, and individual
efforts in the same direction are not wanting. The two
societies’ schools last year reached a total enrolment of
nearly fifteen thousand children, and an average attend¬
ance of almost half that number. Slum children, all of
them. Only such are sought and admitted. The purpose
of the schools, in the language of the last report of the
Children’s Aid Society, whose work, still carried on with
the aggressive enthusiasm that characterized its founder,
may well be taken as typical and representative ia this field,
“ is to receive and educate children who cannot be ac¬
cepted by the public schools, either by reason of their
ragged and dirty condition, or owing to the fact that they
can attend but part of the time, because they are obliged
to sell papers or to stay at home to help their parents.
The children at our schools belong to the lowest and poor¬
est class of people in the city.” They are children, there¬
fore, who to a very large extent speak another language at
home than the one they come to the school to learn, and
often have to work their way in by pantomime. It is en¬
couraging to know that these schools are almost always
crowded to their utmost capacity.

A census of the Society’s twenty-one day schools, that was
taken last April, showed that they contained that day
5,132 pupils, of whom 198 were kindergarten children
under five years of age, 2,347 between five and seven, and
2,587 between eight and fourteen years of age. Consider¬
ably more than ten per cent. — the exact number was
571 — did not understand questions put to them in Eng¬
lish. They were there waiting to “ catch on,” silent but
attentive observers of what was going on, until such time

190

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

as they should be ready to take a hand in it themselves.
Divided according to nativity, 2,082 of the children were
found to be of foreign birth. They hailed from 22 dif¬
ferent countries ; 3,050 were born in this country, but they
were able to show only 1,009 native parents out of 6,991
whose pedigrees could be obtained. The other 5,176 were
foreign born, and only 810 of them claimed English as their
mother-tongue. This was the showing the chief national¬
ities made in the census :

Born in.

Children.

Parents.

United States .

3,050

1,009

Italy .

1,066

2,354

Germany .

460

1,819

Bohemia .

198

720

Ireland .

98

583

At that time the Jewish children were crowding into
the Monroe Street and some other schools, at a rate that
promised to put them in complete possession before long.
Upon this lowest level, as upon every other where they
come into competition with the children of Christian par¬
ents, they distanced them easily, taking all the prizes that
were to be had for regular attendance, proficiency in
studies, and good conduct generally. Generally these
prizes consisted of shoes or much-needed clothing. Often,
as in the Monroe Street School, the bitter poverty of the
homes that gave up the children to the school because
there they would receive the one square meal of the day,
made a loaf of bread the most acceptable reward, and the
teachers gladly took advantage of it as the means of forg¬
ing another link in the chain to bind home and school,
parents, children, and teachers, firmly together.

THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS

191

This “ square meal ” is a chief element in the educa¬
tional plan of most of the schools, because very often it is
the one hot meal the little ones receive — not infrequently,
as I have said, the only one of the day that is worthy of
the name. It is not an elaborate or expensive affair,
though substantial and plentiful. At the West Side In¬
dustrial School, on Seventh Avenue, where one day, not
long ago, I watched a file of youngsters crowding into the
dining-room with glistening eyes and happy faces, the cost
of the dinners averaged 2^ cents last year. In a speci¬
men month they served there 4,080 meals and compared
this showing gleefully with the record of the old School
in Twenty-ninth Street, nine years before. The largest
number of dinners served there in any one month, was
2,666. It is perhaps a somewhat novel way of measur¬
ing the progress of a school : by the amount of eating
done on the premises. But it is a very practical one, as
the teachers have found out. Yet it is not used as a bait.
Care is taken that only those are fed who would otherwise
go without their dinner, and it is served only in winter,
when the need of “ something warm ” is imperative. In
the West Side School, as in most of the others, the dinners
are furnished by some one or more practical philanthro¬
pists, whose pockets as well as their hearts are in the
work. The schools themselves, like the Society’s lodging-
houses for homeless children, stand as lasting monuments
to a Christian charity that asks no other reward than the
consciousness of having done good where the need was
great. Sometimes the very name of the generous giver is
unknown to all the world save the men who built as he or
she directed. The benefactor is quite as often a devoted
woman as a rich and charitable man, who hides his muni¬
ficence under a modesty unsuspected by a community that

192

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

applauds and envies his shrewd and successful business
ventures, but never hears of the investment that paid him
and it best of all.

According to its location, the school is distinctively Ital¬
ian, Bohemian, Hebrew or mixed ; the German, Irish, and
colored children coming in under this head, and mingling
usually without the least friction. The Leonard Street
School and the West Side Italian School in Sullivan Street
are devoted wholly to the little swarthy Southerners. In
the Leonard Street School alone there were between five
and six hundred Italian children on the register last year ;
but in the Beach Street School, and in the Astor Memorial
School in Mott Street they are fast crowding the Irish
element, that used to possess the land, to the wall. So,
in Monroe Street and East Broadway are the Jewish
children. Neither the teachers nor the Society’s mana¬
gers are in any danger of falling into sleepy routine ways.
The conditions with which they have to deal are constantly
changing ; new problems are given them to solve before
the old are fairly worked out, old prejudices to be forgot¬
ten or worked over into a new and helpful interest. And
they do it bravely, and are more than repaid for their
devotion by the real influence they find themselves exert¬
ing upon the young lives which had never before felt the
touch of genuine humane sympathy, or been awakened to
the knowledge that somebody cared for them outside- of
their own dark slum.

All the children are not as tractable as the Bussian
Jews or the Italians. The little Irishman, brimful of
mischief, is, like his father, in the school and in the street,
“ ag’in’ the government ” on general principles, though in a
jovial way that often makes it hard to sit in judgment on
his tricks with serious mien. He feels, too, that to a cer«

THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS

193

tain extent he has the sympathy of his father in his unre¬
generate state, and is the more to be commended if he sub¬
dues the old Adam in himself and allows the instruction
to proceed. The hardest of them all to deal with, until
he has been won over as a friend and ally, is perhaps the
Bohemian child. He inherits, with some of his father’s
obstinacy, all of his hardships, his bitter poverty and
grinding work. School to him is merely a change of
tasks in an unceasing round that leaves no room for play.
If he lingers on the way home to take a hand in a stolen
game of ball, the mother is speedily on his track. Her in¬
struction to the teacher is not to let the child stay “ a
minute after three o’clock.” He is wanted at home to roll
cigars or strip tobacco - leaves for his father, while the
mother gets the evening meal ready. The Bohemian has
his own cause for the reserve that keeps him a stranger in
a strange land after living half his life among us ; his re¬
ception has not been altogether hospitable, and it is not
only his hard language and his sullen moods that are to
blame. All the better he knows the value of the privi¬
lege that is offered his child, and will “ drive him to school
with sticks ” if need be ; an introduction that might be held
to account for a good deal of reasonable reluctance, even
hostility to the school, in the pupil. The teacher has
only to threaten the intractable ones with being sent home
to bring them round. And yet, it is not that they are
often cruelly treated there. On the contrary, the Bohe¬
mian is an exceptionally tender and loving father, perhaps
because his whole life is lived with his family at home, in
the tenement that is his shop and his world. He simply
proposes that his child shall enjoy the advantages that are
denied him — denied partly perhaps because of his refusal to
accept them, but still from his point of view denied. Ana

194

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

he takes a short cut to that goal by sending the child to
school. The result is that the old Bohemian disappears
in the first generation born upon our soil. His temper re¬
mains to some extent, it is true. He still has his surly
streaks, refuses to sing or recite in school when the teacher
or something else does not suit him, and can never be
driven where yet he is easily led ; but as he graduates into
the public school and is thrown more into contact with the
children of more light-hearted nationalities, he grows into
that which his father would have long since become, had
he not got a wrong start : a loyal American, proud of his
country, and a useful citizen.

In the school in East Seventy-third Street, of which I
am thinking, there was last winter, besides the day school
of some four hundred pupils, an evening class of big fac¬
tory girls, most of them women grown, that vividly illus¬
trated the difficulties that beset teaching in the Bohemian
quarter. It had been got together with much difficulty
by the principal and one of the officers of the Society,
who gave up his nights and his own home life to the work
of instructing the school. On the night when it opened,
he was annoyed by a smell of tobacco in the hallways and
took the janitor to task for smoking in the building. The

man denied the charge, and Mr. H - went hunting

through the house for the offender with growing indigna¬
tion, as he found the teachers in the class-rooms sneezing
and sniffing the air to locate the source of the infliction.
It was not until later in the evening, when the sneezing fit
took him too as he was bending over a group of the girls
to examine their slates, that he discovered it to be a feat¬
ure of the new enterprise. The perfume was part of the
school. Without it, it could not go on. The girls were
all cigar makers; so were their parents at home. The

THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS

195

shop and the tenement were organized on the tobacco
plan, and the school must needs adopt it with what patience
it could, if its business were to proceed.

It did, and got on fairly well until a reporter found his
way into it and roused the resentment of the girls by some
inconsiderate, if well-meant, criticisms of their ways. The
rebellion he caused was quelled with difficulty by Mr.

H - , who re-established his influence over them at this

point and gained their confidence by going to live among
them in the school-house with his family. Still the sullen
moods, the nightly ructions. The girls were as ready to
fight as to write, in their fits of angry spite, until my
friend was almost ready to declare with the angry Irish¬
man, that he would have peace in the house if he had to
whip all hands to get it. Christmas was at hand with its
message of peace and good-will, but the school was more
than usually unruly, when one night, in despair, he started
to read a story to them to lay the storm. It was Hans
Christian Andersen’s story of the little girl who sold
matches and lighted her wTay to mother and heaven with
them as she sat lonely and starved, freezing to death in the
street on New Year’s eve. As match after match went
out with the pictures of home, of warmth, and brightness
it had shown the child, and her trembling fingers fumbled
eagerly with the bunch to call them back, a breathless hush
fell upon the class, and when the story was ended, and

Mr. H - looked up with misty eyes, he found the whole

class in tears. The picture of friendless poverty, more
bitterly desolate than any even they had known, had gone
to their hearts and melted them. The crisis was passed
and peace restored.

A crisis of another kind came later, when the pupils’
“ young meji ” got into the habit of coming to see the

196

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

girls home. They waited outside until school was dis¬
missed, and night after night Mr. II - found a ball in

progress on the sidewalk when the girls should long have
been home. The mothers complained and the success of
the class was imperilled. Their passion for dancing was
not to be overcome. They would give up the school first.

Mr. H - thought the matter out and took a long step —

a perilous one. He started a dancing-class, and on certain
nights in the week taught the girls the lanciers instead of
writing and spelling. Simultaneously he wrote to every
mother that the school was not to be blamed if the girls
were not home at ten minutes after nine o’clock ; it was
dismissed at 8.55 sharp every night. The thing took tre¬
mendously. The class filled right up, complaints ceased,
and everything was lovely, when examination day ap¬
proached with the annual visit of friends and patrons.
My friend awaited its coming with fear and trembling.
There was no telling what the committee might say to
the innovation. The educational plan of the Society is
most liberal, but the lanciers was a step even the broadest
of its pedagogues had not yet ventured upon. The evil

day came at last, and, full of forebodings, Mr. H - had

the girls soothe their guests with cakes and lemonade of
their own brewing, until they were in a most amiable
mood. Then, when they expected the reading to begin,
with a sinking heart he bade them dance. The visitors
stared in momentary amazement, but at the sight of the
happy faces in the quadrilles, and the enthusiasm of the
girls, they caught the spirit of the thing and applauded
to the echo. The dancing-class was a success, and so has
the school been ever since.

As far as I know, this is the only instance in which
the quadrille has been made one of the regular English

THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS

197

branches taught in the Industrial Schools. But cake and
lemonade have more than once smoothed the way to a
hearty acceptance of the three IPs with their useful con¬
comitants, as taught there. One of the excellent features
of the system is the “ kitchen garden,” for the little ones,
a kind of play housekeeping that covers the whole range
of house-work, and the cooking class for the larger girls
that gives many of them a taste for housekeeping which
helps to overcome their prejudice against domestic service,
and so to solve one of the most perplexing questions of the
day — no less serious to the children of the poor than to the
wives of the rich, if they only knew or would believe it.
It is the custom of the wise teachers, when the class has
become proficient, to invite the mothers to a luncheon got¬
ten up by their children. “ I never,” reports the teacher
of the Eighteenth Ward Industrial School after such a
session, “ saw women so thoroughly interested.” And it
was not only the mother who was thus won over in the
pride over her daughter’s achievement. It was the home
itself that was invaded with influences that had been
strangers to it heretofore. For the mother learned some¬
thing she would not be apt to forget, by seeing her child
do intelligently and economically what she had herself
done ignorantly and wastefully before. Poverty and waste
go always hand in hand. The girls are taught, with the
doing of a thing, enough also of the chemistry of cooking
to enable them to understand the “why” of it. The in¬
fluence of that sort of teaching in the tenement of the
poor no man can measure. I am well persuaded that half
of the drunkenness that makes so many homes miserable
is at least encouraged, if not directly caused, by the mis¬
management and bad cooking at home. All the wife and
mother knows about housekeeping she has picked up in

198

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

the tenement since she was married, among those who
never knew how to cook a decent meal or set a clean table ;
while the saloonkeeper hires the best cook he can get for
money, and serves his hot lunch free to her husband in a
tidy and cheerful room, where no tired women — tired of
the trials and squabbles of the day— no cross looks, and no
dirty, fighting children come to spoil his appetite and his
hour of rest.

Here, as everywhere, it is the personal influence of the
teacher that counts for most in dealing with the child. It
follows it into the home, and often through life to the
second and third generation, smoothing the way of trouble
and sorrow and hardship with counsel and aid in a hun¬
dred ways. “ Sometimes,” says one of the teachers, who
lias seen the children of her first pupils go from her school
into their own homes to take up the battle of life, “ some¬
times a teacher, while conducting a class, is also fashion¬
ing, from some soft white material, a shroud for some little
one whose parents can provide none themselves. When a
child dies of a disease that is not contagious, its classmates
gather around the coffin and sing in German or English,
‘ I am Jesus’s little lamb.’ Sometimes the children’s
hymn and the Lord’s Prayer are the only service.” Her
life work has been among the poorest Germans on the
East Side. “ Among our young men,” she reports, “ I
know of only three who have become drunkards, and
many are stanch temperance men. I have never known
of one of our girls drinking to excess. I have looked
carefully over our records, and can truly say that, so far
as I can learn, not one girl who remained with us until
over seventeen lived a life of shame.”

What teaching meant to this woman the statement that
follows gives an idea of : “ Shrove Tuesday evening is a

THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS

199

time when all Germans plan for a frolic ; they call it
4 Fastnacht.’ Twenty years ago I gave the young people
of the evening school a party on that evening, and at the
suggestion of one of the girls decided to have a reunion
every year at that time. So each year our married
girls and boys, and those still unmarried, who have grown
beyond us in other ways, come 4 home.’ We sing the
old songs, talk over old times, play games, drink coffee and
eat doughnuts, and always end the evening with 4 Auld
Lang Syne.’ Last spring, two of the young men stood at
the stairway and counted the guests as they went to the
supper-room : they reported over four hundred. Letters
came from Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington,
Texas, Idaho, and Wyoming from those who would gladly
have been with us. All who live within a radius of fifty
miles try to be here.”

44 Among our grown girls,” she adds, 44 we have teach¬
ers, governesses, dressmakers, milliners, trained nurses,
machine operators, hand sewers, embroiderers, designers
for embroidering, servants in families, saleswomen, book¬
keepers, typewriters, candy packers, bric-a-brac packers,
bank-note printers, silk winders, button makers, box mak¬
ers, hairdressers, and fur sewers. Among our boys are
book-keepers, workers in stained glass, painters, printers,
lithographers, salesmen in wholesale houses, as well as in
many of our largest retail stores, typewriters, stenogra¬
phers, commission merchants, farmers, electricians, ship
carpenters, foremen in factories, grocers, carpet designers,
silver engravers, metal burnishers, carpenters, masons,
carpet weavers, plumbers, stone workers, cigar makers,
and cigar packers. Only one of our boys, so far as we
can learn, ever sold liquor, and he has given it up.”

Not a few of these, without a doubt, got the first ink-

200

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

ling of their trade in the class where they learned to read.
The curriculum of the Industrial Schools is comprehen¬
sive. The nationality of the pupils makes little or no dif¬
ference in it. The start, as often as is necessary, is made
with an object lesson — soap and water being the elements,
and the child the object. As in the kindergarten, the al¬
phabet comes second on the list. Then follow lessons in
sewing, cooking, darning, mat-weaving, pasting, and dress¬
making for the girls, and in carpentry, wood carving,
drawing, printing, and like practical “ branches ” for the
boys, not a few of whom develop surprising cleverness at
this or that kind of work. The system is continually ex¬
panding. There are schools yet that have not the neces¬
sary facilities for classes in manual training, but as the
importance of the subject is getting to be more clearly
understood, and interest in the subject grows, new “ shops ”
are being constantly opened and other occupations found
for the children. Even where the school quarters are
most pinched and inadequate, a shift is made to give the
children work to do that will teach them habits of indus¬
try and precision as the all-important lesson to be learned
there. In some of the Industrial Schools the boys learn
to cook with the girls, and in the West Side Italian School
an attempt to teach them to patch and sew buttons on
their own jackets resulted last year in their making their
own shirts, and making them well, too. Perhaps the pos¬
session of the shirt as a reward for making it acted as a
stimulus. The teacher thought so, and she was probably
right, for more than one of them had never owned a
whole shirt before, let alone a clean one. A heap can be
done with the children by appealing to their proper pride
— much more than many might think, judging hastily
from their rags. Call it vanity — if it is a kind of vanity

THE FIRST PATRIOTIC ELECTION IN THE BEACH STREET INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL — PARLOR
IN JOHN ERICSSON’S OLD HOUSE.

THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS

203

that can be made a stepping-stone to the rescue of the
child, it is worth laying hold of. It was distinct evi¬
dence that civilization and the nineteenth century had in¬
vaded Lewis Street, when a class of Hungarian boys in
the American Female Guardian Society’s school in that
thoroughfare earned the name of the “ neck-tie class ” by
adopting that article of apparel in a body. Hone of them
had ever known collar or necktie before.

It is the practice to let the girls have what garments
they make, from material, old or new, furnished by the
school, and thus a good many of the pupils in the Industrial
Schools are supplied with decent clothing. In the winter
especially, some of them need it sadly. In the Italian
school of which I just spoke, one of the teachers found a
little girl of six years crying softly in her seat on a bitter
cold day. She had just come in from the street. In an¬
swer to the question what ailed her, she sobbed out, “ I’se
so cold.” And no wonder. Beside a worn old under¬
garment, all the clothing upon her shivering little body
was a thin calico dress. The soles were worn off her shoes,
and toes and heels stuck out. It seemed a marvel that
she had come through the snow and ice as she had,
without having her feet frozen.

Haturally the teacher would follow such a child into
her home and there endeavor to clinch the efforts begun
for its reclamation in the school. It is the very core and
kernel of the Society’s purpose not to let go of the chil¬
dren of whom once it has laid hold, and to this end it em¬
ploys its own physicians to treat those who are sick, and to
canvass the poorest tenements in the summer months, on
the plan pursued by the Health Department. Last year
these doctors, ten in number, treated 1,578 sick children
and 174 mothers. Into every sick-room and many wretched

204

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

hovels, daily bouquets of sweet flowers found their way
too, visible tokens of a sympathy and love in the world
beyond — seemingly so far beyond the poverty and misery
of the slum — that had thought and care even for such as
they. Perhaps in the final reckoning these flowers, that
came from friends far and near, will have a story to tell
that will outweigh all the rest. It may be an “ impracti¬
cable notion,” as I have sometimes been told by hard-
headed men of business ; but it is not always the hard
head that scores in work among the poor. The language
of the heart is a tongue that is understood in the poorest
tenements where the English speech is scarcely compre¬
hended and rated little above the hovels in which the im¬
migrants are receiving their first lessons in the dignity of
American citizenship.

Yery lately a unique exercise has been added to the
course in these schools, that lays hold of the very marrow
of the problem with which they deal. It is called “ salut¬
ing the flag,” and originated with Colonel George T.
Balch, of the Board of Education, who conceived the idea
of instilling patriotism into the little future citizens of the
Republic in doses to suit their childish minds. To talk
about the Union, of which most of them had but the
vaguest notion, or of the duty of the citizen, of which they
had no notion at all, was nonsense. In the flag it was
all found embodied in a central idea which they could
grasp. In the morning the star-spangled banner was
brought into the school, and the children were taught to
salute it with patriotic words. Then the best scholar of
the day before was called out of the ranks, and it was
given to him or her to keep for the day. The thing took
at once and was a tremendous success.

Then was evolved the plan of letting the children de-

THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS

205

cide for themselves whether or not they would so salute the
flag as a voluntary offering, while incidentally instructing
them in the duties of the voter at a time when voting
was the one topic of general interest. Ballot-boxes were
set up in the schools on the day before the last general
election (1891). The children had been furnished with
ballots for and against the flag the week before, and told
to take them home to their parents and talk it over with
them, a very apt reminder to those who were naturalized
citizens of their own duties, then pressing. On the face
of the ballot was the question to be decided : “ Shall the
school salute the Nation’s flag every day at the morning
exercises ? ” with a Yes and a No, to be crossed out as the
voter wished. On its back was printed a Voter’s A, B, C,
in large plain type, easy to read :

“ This country in which I live, and which is my country,
is called a Republic. In a Republic, the people govern.
The people who govern are called citizens . I am one of
the people and a little citizen.

“ The way the citizens govern is, either by voting for
the person whom they want to represent them, or who
will say what the people want him to say — or by voting
for that thing they would like to do, or against that
thing which they do not want to do.

“ The Citizen who votes is called a voter or an elector ,
and the right of voting is called the suffrage. The voter
puts on a piece of paper what he wants. The piece of
paper is called a Ballot. This Piece of Paper is my Bal¬
lot.

“ The right of a Citizen to vote ; the right to say what
the citizen thinks is best for himself and all the rest of
the people ; the right to say who shall govern us and
make laws for us, is a Great Privilege, a Sacred Trust,

206

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

a very great Responsibility, which I must learn to exer¬
cise conscientiously, and to the best of my knowledge and
ability, as a little Citizen of this great American Re¬
public.”

On Monday the children cast their votes in the Society’s
twenty-one Industrial Schools, with all the solemnity of a
regular election and with as much of its simple machin¬
ery as was practicable. Eighty-two per cent, of the whole
number of enrolled scholars turned out for the occasion,
and of the 4,306 votes cast, 88, not quite two per cent.,
voted against the flag. Some of these, probably the
majority, voted Ho under a misapprehension, but there
were a few exceptions. One little Irishman, in the Mott
Street school, came without his ballot. “ The old man
tored it up,” he reported. In the East Seventy -third Street
school five Bohemians of tender years set themselves down
as opposed to the scheme of making Americans of them.
Only one, a little girl, gave her reason. She brought her
own flag to school : “ I vote for that,” she said, sturdily,
and the teacher wisely recorded her vote and let her keep
the banner.

I happened to witness the election in the Beach Street
school, where the children are nearly all Italians. The
minority elements were, however, represented on the board
of election inspectors by a colored girl and a little Irish
miss, who did not seem in the least abashed by the fact
that they were nearly the only representatives of their
people in the school. The tremendous show of dignity
with which they took their seats at the poll was most im¬
pressive. As a lesson in practical politics, the occasion
had its own humor. It was clear that the negress was
most impressed with the solemnity of the occasion, and the
Irish girl with its practical opportunities. The Italian’s

THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS

207

disposition to grin and frolic, even in her new and solemn
character, betrayed the ease with which she would, were
it real politics, become the game of her Celtic colleague.
When it was all over they canvassed the vote with all the

THE BOARD OF ELECTION INSPECTORS IN THE BEACH STREET SCHOOL.

solemnity befitting the occasion, signed together a certifi¬
cate stating the result, and handed it over to the principal
sealed in a manner to defeat any attempt at fraud. Then
the school sang Santa Lucia, a sweet Neapolitan ballad.
It was amusing to hear the colored girl and the half-dozen

208

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

little Irish children sing right along with the rest the
Italian words, of which they did not understand one.
They had learned them from hearing them sung by the
others, and rolled them out just as loudly, if not as sweet¬
ly, as they.

The first patriotic election in the Fifth Ward Industrial
School was held on historic ground. The house it occu¬
pies was John Ericsson’s until his death, and there he
planned nearly all his great inventions, among them one
that helped save the flag for which the children voted
that day. The children have lived faithfully up to their
pledge. Every morning sees the flag carried to the princi¬
pal’s desk and all the little ones, rising at the stroke of the
bell, say with one voice : “ We turn to our flag as the sun¬
flower turns to the sun ! ” One bell, and every brown
right fist is raised to the brow, as in military salute : “We
give our heads ! ” Another stroke, and the grimy little
hands are laid on as many hearts : “ and our hearts ! ”
Then with a shout that can be heard around the corner :

“ - to our country ! One country, one language, one

flag ! ’’ No one can hear it and doubt that the children
mean every word and will not be apt to forget that les¬
son soon.

The Industrial School has found a way of dealing with
even the truants, of whom it gets more than its share, and
the success of it is suggestive. As stated by the teacher
in the W est Eighteenth Street school who found it out, it
is very simple : “ I tell them, if they want to play truant
to come to me and I will excuse them for the day, and
give them a note so that if the truant officer sees them it
will be all right.” She adds that “ only one boy ever
availed himself of that privilege.” The other boys with
few exceptions became interested, as one would expect,

THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS

209

and came to school regularly. It was the old story of the
boys in the Juvenile Asylum who could be trusted to do
guard duty in the grounds when put upon their honor,
but the moment they were locked up for the night risked
their necks to escape by climbing out of the third-story
windows.

But when it has cheated the street and made of the
truant a steady scholar, the work of the Industrial School
is not all done. Next, it hands him over to the Public
School, clothed and in his right mind, if his time to go to
work has not yet come. Last year the thirty-three Indus¬
trial Schools of the Children’s Aid Society and the Amer¬
ican Female Guardian Society thus dismissed nearly eleven
hundred children who, but for their intervention, might
never have reached that goal. That their charity had not
been allowed to corrupt the children may be inferred from
the statement that, with an average daily attendance of
4,348 in the Children’s Aid Society’s Schools, 1,729 chil¬
dren were depositors in the School Savings Banks to the
aggregate amount of about $800 — a very large sum for
them — and this in the face of the fact, recorded on the
school register, that 938 of the lot came from homes
where drunkenness and poverty went hand in hand. It is
not in the plan of the Industrial School to make paupers3
but to develop to the utmost the kernel of self-help that is
the one useful legacy of the street. The child’s individ¬
uality is preserved at any cost. Even the clothes that are
given to the poorest in exchange for their rags are of dif¬
ferent cut and color, made so with this one end in view.
The distressing “ institution look ” is wholly absent from
these schools, and one of the great stumbling-blocks of
shanty administered at wholesale is thus avoided.

The night schools are for the boys and girls already en-
14

210

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

listed in the treadmill, and who must pick up what learn¬
ing they can in their off hours. Together with the day-
schools they footed up a total enrolment of nearly ten
thousand children whom this Society reached in 1891.
Upon the basis of the average daily attendance, the cost
of their education to the community, which supported the
charity, was $24.53 for each child. The cost of shelter¬
ing, feeding, and teaching 11,770 boys and girls in the
Society’s six lodging-houses was $32.76 for each ; the ex¬
pense of sending 2,825 children to farm-homes $9.96 for
each. The average cost per year for each prisoner in the
Tombs is $107.75, and for every child maintained in an
Asylum, or in the poor-house, nearly $140.*

“ One of our great difficulties,” says the Secretary of
the Children’s Aid Society, in a recent statement of the
Society’s aims and purposes, echoing an old grievance, “ is
with the large boys of the city. There seems to be no
place for them in the world as it is. They have grown
up in it without any training but that in street trades.
The trades unions have kept them from being appren¬
ticed. They are soon too large for street occupations, and
are unable to compete with the small boys. They are too
old for our lodging-houses. We know not what to do with
them. Some succeed well on Western farms, but they are
usually disliked by their employers because they change
places soon ; and their occasional offences and disposition
to move about have given us more trouble in the West
than any other one thing. Yery few people are willing
to bear with them, even though a little patience will some¬
times bring out excellent qualities in them.” They are
the boys for whom the street and the saloon have use that
shall speedily fashion of their “ excellent qualities ” a lash
* Report for 1891 of Children’s Aid Society.

THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS

211

to sting the community’s purse, if not its conscience, with
the memory of its neglect. As 107.75 is to 24.53, or 140
to 9.96, so will be the smart of it compared with the burden
of patience that would have turned the scales the other
way, to put the matter in a light where the hard-headed
man of business can see it without an effort.

There is at least one man of that kind in [New York
who has seen and understood it to some purpose. His
name is Richard T. Auchmuty, and he is by profession an
architect. In that capacity he has had opportunity enough
of observing how the virtual exclusion of the Hew York
boy from the trades worked to his harm, and he started for
his relief an Industrial School that deserves to be ranked
among the great benefactions of our day, even more for its
power to set people to thinking than for the direct benefit
it confers upon the boy, great as that is. Once it comes
to be thoroughly understood that a chance to learn his fa¬
ther’s honest trade is denied the Hew York boy by a for¬
eign conspiracy, because he is an American lad and cannot
be trusted to do its bidding, it is inconceivable that an end
should not be put in quick order to this astounding abuse.
This thing is exactly what is being done in Hew York
now by the consent of its citizens, who without a protest
read in the newspapers that a trades-union, one of the lar¬
gest and strongest in the building trades, has decreed that
for two years from a fixed date no apprentice shall be ad¬
mitted to that trade in Hew York — decreed, with the con¬
sent and connivance of subservient employers, that so many
lads who might have become useful mechanics shall grow
up tramps and loafers ; decreed that a system of robbery
of the American mechanic shall go on by which it has
come to pass that out of twenty-three millions of dollars
paid in a year to the building trades in this city barely six

THE PLUMBING SHOP IN THE NEW YORK TRADE SCHOOLS.

THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS

213

millions are grudgingly accorded the native worker. There
is no decree to exclude the mechanic from abroad. He
may come and go — and go he does, in shoals, to his home
across the sea at the end of each season, with its profits —
under the scheme of international comradeship that ex¬
cludes only the American workman and his boy. I have
talked with some of the most intelligent of the labor lead¬
ers, men well known all over the land, to find out if there
were any defence to be made for this that I was not aware
of, but have got nothing but evasion and sophistries about
the “ protection of labor ” for my answer. A protection,
indeed, that has nearly resulted already in the practical
extinction of the American mechanic, the best and clever¬
est in the world, in America’s chief city, at the bidding
of the Walking Delegate.

Even to Colonel Auchmuty’s Industrial School this per¬
secution has been extended in a persistent attempt for
years to taboo its graduates. In spite of it, the New York
Trade Schools open their twelfth season this winter with
six hundred scholars and more, in place of the thirty who
sat in the first class eleven years ago. The community’s
better sense is coming to the rescue, and the opposition
to the school is wearing off. In the spring as many hun¬
dred young plasterers, printers, tailors, plumbers, stone¬
cutters, bricklayers, carpenters, and blacksmiths will go
forth capable mechanics, and with their self-respect un¬
impaired by the associations of the shop and the saloon
under the old apprentice system. In this one respect
the trades union may have done them a service it did not
intend. Colonel Auchmuty’s school has demonstrated
what it amounts to by furnishing from among its young
men the bricklayers for more than as many handsome
buildings in New York as there were pupils in its first

214

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

class. When a committee of master builders came on
from Philadelphia to see what their work was like, the
report it brought back was that it looked as if the
builders had put their hearts in it, and a trade-school was
forthwith established in that city. Of that, too, Colonel
Auclimuty paid the way from the start.

His wealth has kept the Hew York school above water
since it was started ; but this winter a benevolent mil¬
lionaire, Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, for whom wealth has
other and greater responsibilities than that of ministering
to his own comfort, has endowed it with half a million
dollars, and Mrs. Auchmuty has added a hundred thousand
with the land on First Avenue between Sixty -seventh and
Sixty-eighth Streets upon which the school stands, so that
it starts out with an endowment sufficient to insure its
future. The charges for tuition in the day and evening
classes have never been much more than nominal, but
these may now, perhaps, be reduced even further to allow
the “excellent qualities” of the big boys, of whom the
reformer despairs, to be put to their proper use without
robbing them of the best of all, their self-respect. Then
the gage will have been thrown to the street in good
earnest, and the Walking Delegate’s day will be nearly
spent.

CHAPTEK XIII.

THE BOYS’ CLUBS

BUT it is by the boys’ club that the street is hardest
hit. In the fight for the lad it is that which knocks
out the “ gang,” and with its own weapon — the weapon
of organization. That this has seemed heretofore so little
understood, even by some who have wielded the weapon
valiantly, is to me the strongest argument for the Univer¬
sity Settlement plan, which sends those who would be of
service to the poor out to live among them, to study their
ways and their needs. Very soon they discover why the
gang has such a grip on the boy. It is because it re¬
sponds to a real need of his nature. The distinguishing
characteristic of the American city boy is his genius for
organization. Whether it be in the air, in the soil, or in
an aptitude for self-government that springs naturally
from the street, where every little heathen is a law unto
himself — one of them surely, for the children of foreign¬
ers, who never learn to speak the language in which their
sons vote, exhibit it, if anything, more plainly than the
native-born — he has it, undeniably. Unbridled, allowed
to run riot, it results in the gang. Thwarted, it defeats
all attempts to manage the boy. Accepted as a friend,
an ally, it is the indispensable key to his nature in all
efforts to reclaim him en bloc. Individuals may require
different methods of treatment. To the boys as a class
the club is the pass-key.

216

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

There are many boys’ clubs in New York now, and
room for more. Some have had great success ; a few
have failed. I venture the guess that the real failure in
a good many instances — most of them perhaps — was the
failure to trust the boys to rule themselves. I say rule .
Rule there must be ; boss rule at that. That is the kind
their fathers own, the fashion of the slums. It is a case
of rule or ruin, order or anarchy. To let the boys have
full swing would merely be to invite the street in to take
charge of the house, and only trouble would come of it.
But the boss must be a benevolent and very politic despot.
The boy must have a fair chance. To enlist him heart
and soul, the opportunity must be given him to show that
he can rule himself. And he will show it. He must be
allowed to choose his own leaders. His freedom of speech
must not be abridged in debate by any rule but that of
parliamentary law. Ten to one he will not abuse it, but
will enforce that rule and submit to it as scrupulously as
the most punctilious of his elders. Let him be sure that
his right to self-government will not be interfered with,
and he will voluntarily give up the street and his gang.
Three boys’ clubs had been started by the ladies of the
College Settlement, on the principle of non-interference
within the few and simple rules of the house. The boys
wrote their own laws and maintained order with success.
The street looked on, observant. To the policeman it had
opposed secret hostility or open war. But a social order
with the policeman eliminated was something worthy of
approval. Its offer of surrender was brought in form by
a committee representing the “ Pleasure Club ” in the
toughest block of the neighborhood. “We will change
and have your kind of a club,” was its message. Thus
the fourth boys’ club of the Settlement was launched.

THE BOYS’ CLUBS

217

They have not all had so peaceful a beginning. Storm
and stress of weather have ushered in most of them.
Each new one has cost something for window-glass, and
the mud of the neighborhood has had its inning before it
was forced to abdicate in favor of the club. It was so
with the first that was started, fourteen years ago, in
Tompkins Square, that was then pretty much all mud and
given over to anarchy and disorder. In fact, it was the
mud that started the club. It flew so thick about the
Wilson Mission, and bespattered those who went out and
in so freely that on a particularly boisterous night the
good missionary’s wife decided that something must be
done. She did not send for a policeman. She had tried
that before, but the relief he brought lasted only while he
was in sight. She went out and confronted the mob her-
self. When it had yelled itself hoarse at her, she sweetly
asked it in to have some coffee and cakes. The mob
stared, breathless. Coffee and cakes for stones and mud !
This was the Gospel in a shape that was new and bewilder¬
ing to Tompkins Square. The boys took counsel among
themselves. Visions of a big policeman behind the door
troubled the timid ; but the more courageous were in
favor of taking chances. When they had sidled through
the open door and no yell of distress had betrayed trea¬
son within, the rest followed to find the coffee and the
cakes a solid and reassuring fact. No awkward questions
were asked about the broken windows, and the boys came
out voting the “ missionary people ” trumps, with a tinge
of remorse, let us hope, for the reception they had given
them. There was no more mud-slinging after that, but
the boys fell naturally into neighborly ways with the
house and its occupants, and the proposition to be allowed
to come in and “ play games,” came from them when

218

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

the occasional misunderstandings with the policeman on
the post made the street a ticklish play-ground. They
were let in, and when certain good people heard of what
wras going on in Tompkins Square, they sent down chairs
and tables and games, so that they might be made to feel
at home. Thus kindness conquered the street, and that
winter was founded the first boys’ club here, or, for
aught I know, anywhere. It is still the Boys’ Club of
St. Mark’s Place, and has grown more popular with the
boys as the years have passed. The record of last win¬
ter’s doings over there show no less than 2,757 boys on
its roll of membership. The total attendance for the
year was 42,118, and the nightly average 218 boys, every¬
one of whom, but for the coffee and cakes of that mem¬
orable night, might have been in the streets slinging
mud.

These doings include, nowadays, more than amusements
and games. They made the beginning, and they are yet
the means of bringing the boys in. Once there, as many
as choose may join classes in writing, in book-keeping,
singing, and modelling ; those who come merely for fun
can have all they want, on condition that they pay their
respects to the wash-room and keep wfithin the bounds of
the house. This they do with the aid of the Superin¬
tendent and his assistants, who are chosen from among the
bigger boys and manage to preserve order marvellously
well with very little show of authority, all considered.
The present Superintendent, Mr. Tyrrell, still nurses the
memory of a pair of black eyes he achieved in the man¬
agement of a “ tough ” club in Macdougal Street, where
the boys came with “ billies ” and pistols in their hip-
pockets and taught him the secret of club management in
their own way. He puts it briefly this way : “ It is just a

THE BOYS’ CLUBS

219

question of who is to be boss.” That settled, things run
smoothly enough if the right party is on top.

In justice to the Tompkins Square boys, it should be
said that the question with them once for all was decided
by the missionary’s coffee and cakes. If there was ever a
passing disposition to forget it, “ Pop’s ” blighting eye
helped the club to recall it in no time. Pop was the door¬
keeper, and a cripple, with a single mind. His one con¬
scious purpose in life was to keep order in the club, and
he was blessed beyond most mortals in attaining his am¬
bition, if blessed in nothing else. Under different auspices
Pop might have been a rare bruiser, for, cripple that he
was, he was as strong as he was determined. Under the
humanizing influences that had conquered Tompkins
Square he became one of the jewels of the Boys’ Club.
If a round in the boxing-room threatened to wind up in a
“ slugging match ; ” if luck had gone against a boy at the
game of “ pot-cheese ” until he felt that he must avenge
his defeat by thumping his adversary, or burst — Pop’s
stern glance transfixed the offender and pointed him to
the street, silent and meek, all the fight taken out of him
on the spot. The boys liked him for all that, perhaps
just because they were a little afraid of him, and when
Pop died last summer, at the age of twenty-two, after ten
years of faithful attendance upon the basement-door in
St. Mark’s Place, many an honest sob was gulped down at
his funeral behind a dirty and tattered cap. It is not the
style for boys to cry in Tompkins Square, but it is the
style to honor the memory of a dead friend, and the
Square never saw such a funeral as poor Pop’s. The boys
chipped in and bought a gorgeous floral pillow for his
coffin. So soft a pillow Pop never knew in life.

Many a little account in the club’s penny savings-bank

220

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

was wiped out to do Pop that last good turn ; but the Su¬
perintendent cashed all demands without a remonstrance.
It is not often the money is drawn with so lofty a purpose.
Most of the depositors earn a few pennies selling news¬
papers or doing errands. Their accounts are seldom
large. In the aggregate they make up quite a little sum,
however. On a certain night last June, when I was
there, the bank contained almost a hundred dollars, in de¬
posits ranging from ten cents up to nearly five dollars.
That week the Superintendent had cashed sixteen books ;
the smallest had eleven cents to the credit of its owner,
who had been greatly taken with a mouth-organ and had
withdrawn his capital to buy it. Another had been sav¬
ing up for a pair of boots. There were a few capitalists
in the club, who, when they got a dollar and a half or two
dollars together, transferred them to the Bowery Bank,
where they kept an account. It was easy to predict a
successful business career for these ; not so with the gen¬
eral run, who were anything but steady depositors, though
the Superintendent gave them the credit that “ very few
drew out their money till they had fifty cents in bank.”

If the club has developed no great financiers, it has at
least brought out one latent genius in a young sculptor
who has graduated from the modelling class into an art
museum, and was at last accounts preparing to go abroad
and spend his accumulated savings in the pursuit of fur¬
ther knowledge. A short time before the visit of which
I speak, a sudden crisis had made the old class in “ First
Aid to the Injured ” come out strong under difficulties.
A man had fallen down the basement-stairs into the
club-room, in an epileptic fit. It was three years since
the boys had been taught how to manage till the doctor
came, in case of accident, but they rose to the emer-

THE BOYS’ CLUBS

221

gency with a jump. One unbuttoned the man’s collar,
another slapped his hands, while a third yelled for a
dollar to put between his teeth. It had not occurred to
the young surgeon who taught the boys the first princi¬
ples of his profession that dollars are rather scarcer about
Tompkins Square than on the Avenue, and this oversight
came near upsetting the good done by the rest of his
teaching. There was no dollar, not even a quarter, in
the crowd, and the man lay gritting his teeth until one of
the rescuers, less literal but more practical than the rest,
suggested a pencil or a pocket-knife and broke the spell.

The mass of the boys come in nightly just to have a
good time, and they have it. They play at parchesi and
messenger-boy with an ardor that leaves them no time to
care what visitors come and go. Like street boys every¬
where, they have a special fondness for games that admit
the dice as an element. Gambling is in the very air of
the street, and is encouraged in a hundred hidden ways the
police rarely discover. Small candy stores and grocery
back-rooms harbor policy shops, lotteries, and regular gam¬
bling hells, where the boys are taught how to buck the
tiger on a penny scale. In the club games the dice are
robbed of their power for evil. It is the environment
here again that makes the difference. It has made a vast
difference in the boy who once stalked in, hat on the back
of his head, and grimy fists in his breeches’ pockets until
Pop’s stony eye caught his. Now he hangs up his hat
upon entering, and goes to the wash-room without waiting
to be asked by the Superintendent if there is no soap and
water where he comes from. Then he gets the game or
the book he wants, surrendering his card as a check upon
him until it is returned. It is a precaution intended to
identify the borrower in case of any damage being done to

A BOYS' CIUB READING-ROO’

THE BOYS’ CLUBS

223

the club’s property. Such a thing as theft of book or
game is not known. In his business meetings the boy de¬
bates a point of order with the skill and persistence of a
trained politician. The aptitude for politics sticks out
all over him ; but he has some lessons of that trade to
learn yet, to his harm. He has not mastered the trick of
betraying a friend. Any member of his club, the Super¬
intendent feels sure, would stand up for him and take a
thrashing, if need be, should he be found in trouble on his
“beat.” The “beats” that converge at St. Mark’s Place
and Avenue A cover a good deal of ground. The lads
come from a mile around to the Boys’ Club. Occasionally
“ the gang ” calls in a body. One evening it is the Thir¬
teenth Street gang, the next the Eighth Street gang, and
again a detachment from Avenue A. By the first-comers
it is sometimes possible to foretell the particular complex¬
ion of the clientele of the night ; but the business charac¬
ter of the gang is left outside on the sidewalk. Within it
is amiability itself, and gradually the rough corners are
rubbed off, old quarrels made up, feuds forgotten in the
new companionship ; the gang is merged in the club, the
victory over the street won.

At Christmas and at odd seasons, when the necessary
talent can be secured, entertainments are given in the
club-room. Sometimes the boys themselves furnish the
entertainment, and then there is never a lack of critics
in the audience. There never is, for that matter. Mr.
Evert Jansen Wendell, who has been one of the boys’
best friends, tells some amusing things about his experi¬
ence at such gatherings. Ice-cream is always intensely
popular as a side issue. Some of the boys never fail to
wrap a piece up in paper, or put it in the pocket without
wrapping, to take home to the baby sister or brother.

224

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

Only one, to Mr. Wendell’s knowledge, ever refused ice¬
cream at an entertainment, and he explained, by way of
apology, that he had had the colic all day and his mother
had told him “ she’d lick him if he took any.” For a
dignified missionary, who in telling the boys about the
spread of the Gospel in the Far East, proposed to illus¬
trate heathen customs by arraying himself in native cos¬
tumes, brought along for the purpose, it must have been
embarrassing to a degree to be cautioned by the audience
to “ keep his shirt on.” But his mishap was as nothing
to what befell a young lady, the daughter of a wealthy
and distinguished financier, who with infinite trouble had
persuaded her father to assist at a certain festive occasion
in her favorite club. He was an amateur with the magic
lantern, the boys’ dear delight, and took it down to amuse
them. Mr. Wendell tells what followed :

The show was progressing famously, and the daughter
was beaming with pride, when one of the boys suddenly
beckoned to her, and pointing to the distinguished finan¬
cier remarked :

“ What der yer call dat bloke ? ”

“ Whom do you mean ? ” asked the proud daughter,
in a tone of much surprise, being quite unaccustomed
to hearing the distinguished financier described as a
“ bloke.”

“ I mean dat bloke over dere, settin’ off dem picturs ! ”
replied the boy.

“ What do you desire to know about him ? ” inquired
the proud daughter, with freezing dignity.

“ I want ter know what yer call one of them fellers dat
sets off picturs ? ” persisted the boy.

“That gentleman,” said the proud daughter, in her
most impressive tone, “ is my father.”

THE BOYS’ CLUBS

225

“Well!” said the boy, surveying her with supreme
contempt, “ don’t yer know yer own father’s trade ? ”

The Boys’ Club lias had many followers. Some aim
at teaching the lads trades ; others content themselves
with trying to mend their manners, while weaning them
from the street and its coarse ways. Still others keep
the moral improvement in view as the immediate object,
as it is the ultimate end. Some follow the precedent of
the Boys’ Club in charging nothing for admission ; other
club-organizers, like the managers of the College Settle¬
ment, have found the weekly fee as necessary as home
rule to encourage self-help and self-respect in the boy,
and to bring out the best that is in him. Most of them
have libraries suited to the children. The College Settle¬
ment has a very excellent one of more than a thousand
volumes, which is in constant use. The managers report
that the boys clamor for history and science, popularly
presented, as boys do everywhere, while the girls mainly
read fiction. The success of different plans demonstrates
the futility of some pet theories on this phase of social
economics at least, in the present state of knowledge on
the subject. The Boys’ Club in St. Mark’s Place, for in¬
stance, is kept entirely free from religious influence of
any sort, and their experience has led many of its friends
to believe that success is possible only in that way.
Probably in that particular case it might not have been
possible on anything like such a scale in any other way.
The mud of Tompkins Square testified loudly enough to
that. On the other hand, the managers of some very
successful and active boys’ clubs that have sprouted under
Church influence and with a strong Sunday-school bias,
maintain with conviction that theirs is the true and only
plan. One holds that only in leaving religion out is there
15

THE AVENUE C WORKING BOYS’ CLUB,

THE CARPENTER SHOP IN

THE BOYS’ CLUBS

227

hope of success ; the other, that there can be none without
letting it in and keeping it ever in the foreground. Each
sees only half the truth. It is not the profession, or lack
of profession, of a principle, but the principle itself that
is the condition of success — the real sympathy and in¬
terest in the children that bids them come and be wel¬
come, that seeks to understand their needs and help them
for their own sake, a religion that “ beats preaching ”
among the poor any day. It is a question of men and
of hearts, not of faith. And the poorer the children,
the more friendless and forsaken, the more readily do
they respond to approaches in that spirit. The testimony
of a teacher in the Poverty Gap play-ground, who went
up town to take charge of one where the children were
better dressed and correspondingly “ stuck up,” was that
in all their rags and dirt the little toughs of the Gap
were much the more approachable and more promising
to work with.

Naturally the Church might be expected to have found
this out and to be turning the knowledge to use. And it
is so. All sects are reaching now for the children in a
healthy rivalry, in which the old cry about empty pews is
being smothered and forgotten. Of the twenty-six boys’
clubs that are down in the Charity Organization Society’s
directory, nineteen are under church roofs or patronage,
and of the remaining seven I know two at least to have
been founded by churches. The proportion is more
than preserved, I think, in the larger number not regis¬
tered there, as in all the philanthropic work of many
kinds that is now going on among the children. The
Roman Catholics never lost sight of the fact that the little
ones were the life of the Church, which the Protestants
have had, in a measure, to rediscover. Their grip upon

228

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

the children was never relaxed. The parochial school has
enabled them to maintain it without need of recourse to
the social shifts the Protestants are adopting to regain lost
prestige. Nevertheless, they have not let lie unused the
best grappling-hook by which the boy might be caught
and held. Their schools and churches abound with clubs
and societies, organized upon a plan of absolute home-
rule, under the spiritual directorship of the parish priest.
Among Protestant denominations the Episcopal Church
especially shows this evidence of a strong life stirring
within it. The Boys’ Clubs of Calvary Parish, of St.
George’s, and of many other churches, are powerful moral
agents in their own neighborhoods. Everywhere some
strong sympathetic personality is found to be the centre
and the life of the work. It may be that the pastor him¬
self is the moving force ; or he has the faculty of stir¬
ring it in others. His young men are at work in the par¬
ish. It is a hopeful sign to find young men, to whom the
sacrifice meant the loss of much that makes life beauti¬
ful, giving their time and services freely to the poor
night schools and rough boys’ clubs — hopeful alike for
the Church, for the boys, and for their teachers. The
women have had the missionary work of the Church, as
well as the pews, long enough to themselves. I am not
speaking now of the college-bred men and women, who in
their University Settlements pursue the plan that has
proven so beneficent in England, but of another class,
young business men, bank clerks, and professional men —
sometimes of large means and of high social standing —
whom night after night I have found thus unostenta¬
tiously working among the children with more patience
than I could muster, and with the genuine love for their
work that overcame all obstacles. They were not always

THE BOYS’ CLUBS

229

going the errand of a church there, but that they were
doing the work of the Church there could be no doubt,
and doing it in a way to make it once more a living issue
among the poor.

The rector of old St. George’s, which under his pastor¬
ate has grown from a forgotten temple with empty pews
to be one of the strong factors in life on the crowded East
Side, with Sunday congregations the great building can
hardly contain, roughly outlines his plans for work among
the children this way, which with variations of detail is
the plan of all the churches :

“ Get as many of the very little children as possible
into our kindergartens, and there let them have the ad¬
vantage of Christian kindergarten training, before they
are old enough to go to the public schools. Keep touch of
those same children and get them into the infant depart¬
ments of the Sunday-school. Then take the little fellows
from these, and see that in one or two nights in the week
we reach them in our boys’ clubs; and then, when they
are fourteen years old, they are eligible for admission to
our battalion. There, by drills, exercises, etc., we hold
them till they can enter our Men’s Club.”

The Sunday-school commands the approach to the club,
but does not obstruct it. It stands at the door and takes
the tickets. Anyone may enter, but through that door
only. Once he has passed in, he is his own master. The
church is content with claiming only his Sundays when
the club is not in session. The experience at St. George’s
on the home-rule question has been eminently character¬
istic. The boys could not be made to take a live interest
in the club except on condition that they must run it
themselves. That point yielded, they promptly boomed
it to high-water mark. At present they elect their offi-

230

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

cers twice a year, to give them full swing, and one set is
no sooner installed than wire-pulling begins for the next
election. Once, when some trouble in the Athletic Club
caused the clergy to take it in hand and appoint a presi¬
dent of their own choice, the membership fell off so rap¬
idly that it was on the point of collapse when the tide was
turned by a bold stroke. The managers announced a free
election. The boys returned with a rush, put opposition
tickets in the field, and amid intense enthusiasm over
three hundred and fifty out of a total of four hundred
votes were cast. The club was saved. It has been popu¬
lar ever since.

The payment of monthly dues was found at St. George’s
to be equally essential to success. “ The boys know that
they have to pay,” said the young clergyman, who quietly
superintends their doings; “if they didn’t, it wouldn’t
be a right club.” So they pay their pennies and enjoy
the independence of it. The result has been a transfor¬
mation in which the entire neighborhood rejoices. “Four
years ago,” said their friend, the clergyman, “ these same
boys stoned us and carried on like the toughs they were.
Now we have got here a lot of young gentlemen and loyal
friends.” Every week-day night the Parish House in
East Sixteenth Street resounds with their merriment; on
Saturday, with the roll of drums and crash of martial
music. Then the Battalion Club meets for drill under
the instruction of a former officer in the United States
Army. In their natty uniforms the lads are good to look
upon, and thoroughly enjoy the exercises, as any boy of
spirit would.

The Little Boys’ Club languished somewhat for want of
a definite programme until the happy idea of a series of
talks on elementary chemistry and physics was hit upon.

THE BOYS’ CLUBS

231

An eminently practical turn was given to the talks by
taking the boys to the gas-house, for instance, when gas
was up for discussion ; to the ship-yard, when boat-build¬
ing was the topic ; to
the water-works, when
it was water ; and to
see the great dy¬
namos at work,
when they were
grappling
with the sub¬
ject of elec¬
tricity. A f-
terward the
boys were
made to tell
in writing
what they had
seen, and some of
them told it surprising¬
ly well, showing that they
had made excellent use of
their eyes and their brains.

There is a limit, unfortu¬
nately, to the range of sub¬
jects that can be illustrated
to advantage in that way ;

the managers had come to TTTE-s^™mQiL™cLiu™.N™ 0

the end of their tether, and

were puzzling over the question what to do next, when a
friend of the club gave it several thousand dollars with
which to fit up a manual training-school. Since then it
has been in clover. A house was hired in East Eleventh

232

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

Street and transformed into a carpenter-shop, and prepa¬
rations to open it were in progress when these pages were
sent to the printer. The club then had over two hundred
members. It will probably have twice as many before
the winter is over.

The carpenter-shop of the Avenue C Working Boys’
Club has been a distinct success for several seasons. The
work done by the boys after a few months’ instruction
compares often well with that of the majority of appren¬
tices who have been years learning the trade in the regu¬
lar way. The shop is fitted out with benches and all the
necessary tools. A class in type-setting vies with the
young carpenters in excellence of workmanship and devo¬
tion to business. The printers have ambitious designs
upon the reading public. They intend to start a monthly
“ organ ” of their club, an experiment that was tried once
but frustrated by a change of base from Twenty-first
Street to the present quarters at No. 650 East Fourteenth
Street. The club grew up under the eaves of St. George’s
Church eight years ago, and was known by the name of
the St. George’s Boys’ Club after it had been forced to
move away to make room for the erection of the Parish
House. Some of the boys work in the daytime at the
trades which they are taught at the club in the evening,
and the instruction thus received has helped them to earn
better salaries in many cases. One of the managers
keeps a bank account for those who can save money
and want to invest it, and more than one of them has
a snug little sum to his credit. There are fifty boys in
each class, and always plenty waiting for vacancies to
occur. The best pupils receive medals at the end of
the year, and once every summer the managers, who are
young men of position and character, take them out in

THE BOYS’ CLUBS

233

the country for an outing, and are boys with them in
their games and in their delight over the new sights they
see there.

Mr. Wendell tells of one of these trips down to see
“ Buffalo Bill ” on Staten Island. There was a big crowd
of excursionists on the boat going down, and the captain
took a fatherly interest in the boys, who wrere gathered
together in the bow of the boat, quiet as lambs. The
return trip was not so peaceful, though the captain good-
naturedly delayed the boat beyond the starting time for
fear some of “ our boys ” would get left, as indeed proved
to be the fate of several. But by the time this was dis¬
covered it was no longer a source of regret to him. The
Indians and the bucking broncos had made the boys
restless. They stood around the brass band, and one of
them attempted to relieve his pent-up feelings by stick¬
ing a button into the big trombone, with the effect of
nearly strangling the stout gentleman who was playing
on it. The enraged musician made a wild dive for the
boy, who dodged around the smokestack and caught up a
chair to defend himself with. In a moment a first-class
riot was in progress, chairs flying, the band men swearing,
and the boys yelling like Comanches. When quiet had
been finally restored, the boys banished to the after-deck,
and the button fished out of the trombone, the perspiring
captain swore with a round oath that he “ wouldn’t take

those d - d boys down to Staten Island again for ten

dollars a head.”

The trade-school feature of the Working Boys’ Club
may soon be reproduced in the Calvary Parish Boys’ Club
in East Twenty-third Street. They have already a useful
type-setting class there, and they have that which their
neighbors in Fourteenth Street have yet to get : their own

234

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

handsome building, bought for the club by wealthy mem¬
bers of Calvary Church, in which it had its birth four
years ago. More than that, they have a gymnasium that
is the chief attraction of all that neighborhood, particularly
the boxing-gloves in it. There were some serious doubts
about these, and long and grave discussion before they
were added to the general outfit. The street was rather
too partial to fisticuffs, it was thought, and there were
too many outstanding grudges among the boys to make
their introduction safe. However, another view prevailed
and the choice proved to be a wise one. The gloves are
popular — very, and under the firm management of the
experienced superintendent, who knows where to draw the
safe line, the boys work off their superabundant spirits
and sundry other little accounts very successfully in their
nightly bouts. The feeling of fellowship and neighborly
interest thus encouraged has even led to the establishment
of a mutual benefit fund, through which the boys help
each other in sickness or distress, and which they manage
themselves, electing their own officers.

For anyone who knows the boys of the East Side it is
not hard to understand that the Calvary Parish Boys’
Club has registered more than twenty-eight thousand
callers since it was opened, only four years ago. It has
four hundred enrolled members, who pay monthly dues
of ten cents, so that they may feel that the club is theirs
by right, not by charity. Though church and temper¬
ance stood at the cradle of the club — it was organized at
a meeting of the Calvary branch of the Church Tem¬
perance Society — there is no preaching to the boys.
The only sermons they hear at the club are the sermons
of brotherly love and kindness, which the cheerful rooms,
the games, the books, and the gymnasium — even the

THE BOYS’ CLUBS

235

boxing-gloves — preach to them every night, and which
the contrast of it all with the street, that was their all
only a little while ago, is not apt to let them forget.

A small sign, with the words “ Wayside Boys’ Club,”
hung for a while over the Third Avenue door of the

A BOUT WITH THE GLOVES IN THE BOYS’ CLUB OP CALVARY PARISH.

Bible House. Two years ago it was taken down ; the
club had been merged in the Boys’ Club of Grace Mis¬
sion, in East Thirteenth Street. The members were all
little fellows. They were soon made aware that they had
fallen among strangers who, boylike, proposed to investi¬
gate them and to test their prowess before letting them

236

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

in on equal terms. Within a week, says Mr. Wendell,
this note came to their patroness in the Bible House :

“ Dear Mrs. - :

“ Would you please come and see to our Wayside
Boys’ Club ; that the first time it was open it was very
nice, and after that near every boy in that neighbor¬
hood came walking in. And if you would be so kind
to come and put them out it would be a great pleasure
to us.

“ Mrs. - , the club is not nice any more, and when

we want to go home, the boys would wait for us outside,
and hit you.

“ Mrs. - , since them boys are in the club we don’t

have any games to play with, and if we do play with the
games, they come over to us and take it off us.

“ And by so doing please oblige,

- , President ,

- , Vice-President ,

- , Treasurer ,

- , Secretary,

- , Floor Manager .

“ Please excuse the writing. I was in haste.

“ - , Treasurer .”

The appeal had its effect. The Wayside boys were
rescued and there has been quiet in Thirteenth Street
since. They have got a new house now, and are looking
hopefully forward to the day when “ near every boy in
that neighborhood,” shall “ come walking in ” upon an
errand of peace.

Most of the clubs close in the summer months, when it
has heretofore been supposed that few of the boys would

THE BOYS’ CLUBS

237

attend. The experience of the Boys’ Club in St. Mark’s
Place, which this past summer was kept open a full month
later than usual and experienced no such collapse, although
the park across the street might be supposed to be an
extra attraction on warm evenings, suggests that there is
some mistake about this which it would be worth while
to find out. The street is no less dangerous to the boy in
summer because it is more crowded. The Free Beading-
Room for boys in West Fourteenth Street is open all the
year round, and though the attendance in summer de¬
creases one-half, yet the rooms are never empty.

The wish expressed by the President of the Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, in a public utter¬
ance a year ago, that there might be a boys’ club for
every ward in the city, has been more than fulfilled.
There are more boys’ clubs nowadays than there are
wards, though I am not sure that they are so distributed
that each has one. There are some wards in which
twenty might not come amiss. A directory of the local
gangs, which might be obtained by consultation with the
corner-grocers and with the policeman on the beat after
a “ scrap ” with the boys, would be a good guide to the
right spots and also in the choice of managers. Some¬
thing over a year ago a club was opened in Bleecker
Street that forthwith took on the character of a poultice
upon a rather turbulent neighborhood. In the second
week more than a hundred boys crowded to its meetings.
It “ drew ” entirely too well. When I looked for it this
fall, it was gone — “ thank goodness ! ” said the owner of
the tenement, a little woman who kept a shop across the
street, with a sigh of relief that spoke volumes. Yet she
had no more definite complaint to make than what might
be inferred from the emphasis she put on the words

238

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOP*

“them boys!” A friend of the club, or of some of the
boys belonging to it, whom I hunted up, interpreted the
sigh and the emphasis. The boys got the upper hand, he
said. They had just then made a fresh start under an¬
other roof and with a new manager.

Such experiences have not been uncommon, and, as it
often happens when inquiry is pursued in the right spirit,
the mistakes they buoyed have been the greatest successes
of the cause. There has been enough of the other kind
too. Any club manager can tell of cases, lots of them, in
which the club has been the stepping-stone of the boy to
a useful career. In some cases the boys, having outgrown
their club, have carried on the work unaided and organ¬
ized young men’s societies on a plane of in-door respecta¬
bility that has raised an effectual barrier against the gang
and its club-room, the saloon. These things show what a
hold the idea has upon the boy and how much more might
be made of it. So far, private benevolence has had the
field to itself, properly so ; but there is a way in which
the municipality might help without departing from safe
moorings, so it seems to me. Why not lend such schools
or class-rooms as are not used at night to boys’ clubs
that can show a responsible management, for their meet¬
ings ? In England the Recreative Evening Schools Asso¬
ciation has accomplished something very like this by
simply demonstrating its justice and usefulness. “ Its
object,” says Robert Archey Woods, in his work on Eng¬
lish social movements, “ is to carry on through voluntary
workers evening classes in the board schools, combining
instruction and recreation for boys and girls who have
passed through the elementary required course. Its plan
includes also the use of the schools for social clubs, and
the use of school play-grounds for gymnastics and out-

THE BOYS’ CLUBS

239

door games. This simple programme, as carried out, lias
shown how much may be accomplished through means
which are close at hand. There are in London three hun¬
dred and forty-five such classes, combining manual train¬
ing with entertainment, and their average attendance is
ten thousand. Schools of the same kind are carried on in
a hundred other places outside of London. Beside their
immediate success under private efforts, these schools are
bringing Parliament to see the importance of their object.
Of late the Government has been assuming the care of
recreative evening classes, little by little, and it looks as
if ultimately all the work of the Evening Schools Associa¬
tion would be undertaken by the school boards.” I am
not advocating the surrender of the boys’ club to our New
York School Board. I am afraid it would gain little by
it and lose too much. But they might be trusted as land¬
lords, if not as managers. The rent is always the heaviest
item in the expense account of a boys’ club, for the lads
must have room. If cramped, they will boil over and
make trouble. If this item were eliminated, the cause
might experience a boom that would more than repay the
community for the wear and tear of the school-rooms,
by a reduction in the outlay for jails and police courts.
There would be another advantage in the introduction of
the school to the boy in the role of a friend, which might
speed the work of the truant officer. I cannot see any
serious objection to such a proposition. I have no doubt
there are school trustees who can see a whole string of
them ; but I should not be surprised if they all came to
this, that the schools are not for any such purpose. To
this it would be a sufficient answer that the schools belong
to the people.

Another suggestion came home to me with force while

240

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

watching the drill of the Battalion Club at St. George’s
one night recently. It has long been the favorite idea of
a friend and neighbor of mine, who is an old army officer
and has seen service in the field, that a summer camp for
boys from the city tenements could be established some¬
where in the mountains at a safe distance from tempting
orchards, where an army of them might be drilled with
immense profit to themselves and to everybody. He will
have it that they could be managed as easily as an equal

LINING UP FOR THE GYMNASIUM.

number of men, with the right sort of organization and
officers, and as in his business he runs along smoothly
with four or five hundred girls under his command, I am
bound to defer to his judgment, however much my own
may rebel, particularly as he would be acting out my own
convictions, after all, in his wholesale way. In any event
the experiment might be tried with a regiment if not with
an army, and it would be a very interesting one. The
boys would have lots of chance for wholesome play as

THE BOYS’ CLUBS

241

well as drill, and would get no end of fun out of it. The
possible hardships of camping out would have no existence
for them. As for any lasting good to come of it, outside
of physical benefits, I think the discipline alone, with what
it stands for, would cover that. In the reform schools,
where they have military drill, they have found it their
most useful ally in dealing with the worst and wildest
class of the boys. It is the bump of organization that is
touched again there. Resistance ceases of itself and the
boys fall into line. Too much can be made of discipline,
of course. The body may be drilled until it is a mere
machine and the real boy is dead. But that has nothing
to do with such an experiment as I spoke of. That is the
concern of reform schools, and I do not think they are in
any danger of overdoing it.

I spoke of managing the girls. It is just the same with
them. I have had the “gang” in mind as the alternative
of the club, and therefore have dealt so far only with their
brothers. Girls do not go in gangs, thank goodness, at
least not yet in Hew York. They flock, until the boys
scatter them and drive them oil one by one. But the
same instinct of self-government is in them. They take
just as kindly to the club. The Neighborhood Guild, the
College Settlement, and various church and philanthropic
societies, carry on such clubs with great success. The
girls sew, darn stockings, cook, make their own dresses,
and run their own meetings with spirit when the boys
are made to keep their profaning hands off. On occasion
they develop the same rugged independence with an ex¬
tra feminine touch to it, that is, a mixture of dash and
spite. I recall the experience of a band of early philan¬
thropists, who, a score of years ago or more, bought the
Big Flat in the Sixth Ward and fitted it up as a boarding-
16

242

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

house for working girls. They filled it without any trou¬
ble, though with a rather better grade of boarders than
they had expected. No sooner were the girls in posses¬
sion than they promptly organized and “ resolved ” that
the management should make no rules for the house
without first submitting them to their body for approval.
Philanthropy chose the least pointed horn of the dilemma,
and retired from the field. The Big Flat, from a model
boarding-house became a very bad tenement, and the
boarders’ club dissolved, to the loss and injury of a pos¬
terity that was distinctly poorer and duller, no less for the
want of the club than for the possession of the tenement.

The boys’ club was born of the struggle of the commu¬
nity with the street, as a measure of self-defence. It has
proven a useful war-club too, but its conquests have been
the conquests of peace. It has been the kernel of success
in many a philanthropic undertaking, secular and relig-
ious alike. In the plan of the Free Beading-Room for
Working Boys, of which I made mention, it is used as a
battering-ram in an attack upon the saloon. The Free
Beading-Boom was organized some nine or ten years ago
by the Loyal Legion Temperance Society. It has been
popular with lads of all ages from the very start, not least
on account of the club or clubs which they were encour¬
aged to found — literary societies they call them there.
The Superintendent found them helpful, too, as a means
of interesting the boys, by debate and otherwise, in the
cause of temperance which he had at heart. The first
thing a boys’ club casts about for after the offices have
been manned and the by-laws made hard and fast, is a
cause. One of young boys, that had been in existence a
month or less at the College Settlement, almost took the
ladies’ breath away by announcing one day that it had de-

THE BOYS’ CLUBS

243

cided to expel any boy who smoked or got drunk. The
Free Reading-Boom gives ample opportunity for the exer¬
cise of this spirit of convert zeal, when it manifests itself.
The average nightly attendance last year was seventy-one,
and a good deal larger than that in winter. The boys
came from as far south as Houston Street, nearly a mile
below, and from Forty-second Street, a mile and half to
the north, in all kinds of weather.

The doors of the reading-room stand wide open on
Sunday as on week-day nights. With singing, and talks
on serious or religious subjects in a vein the boys can fol¬
low, they try to give to the proceedings a Sabbath turn of
which the impression may abide with them. The regular
Sunday-School exercises have, I am told by the Superin¬
tendent, been abandoned, and the present less formal, but
more effective, programme substituted. One has need of
being wiser than the serpent if he would build effectually
in this field among the poor of many races and faiths
that swarm in Hew York’s tenements, and he must make
his foundation very broad. The great thing for the boys
is that the room is not closed against them on the very
night in all the week when they need it most. I think
we are coming at last to understand what a trap we have
been digging for the young in our great cities, when we
thought to save them from temptation, by shutting every
door but that of the church against them on the day when
the devil was busiest finding mischief for their idle hands
to do, while narrowing that down to the size of a wicket-
gate with our creeds and confessions. The poor bury
their dead on Sunday to save the loss of a day’s pav.
Po verty has given over their one day of rest to their sor¬
rows. Is it likely that any attempt to rob it of its few
harmless joys should win them over ? It is the shadow of

244

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

bigotry and intolerance falling across it that has turned
healthy play into rioting and moral ruin. Open the mu¬
seums, the libraries, and the clubs on Sunday, and tlie
church that draws the bolt will find the tide of reawakened
interest that will set in strong enough to fill its own pews,
too, to overflowing.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE OUTCAST AND THE HOMELESS

Under the heading “ Just one of God’s Children,” one
of the morning newspapers told the story last winter of a
newsboy at the Brooklyn Bridge, who fell in a fit with
his bundle of papers under his arm, and was carried into
the waiting-room by the bridge police. They sent for an
ambulance, but before it came the boy was out selling
papers again. The reporters asked the little dark-eyed
news-woman at the bridge entrance which boy it was.

“ Little Maher it was,” she answered.

“ Who takes care of him ? ”

“ Oh ! no one but God,” said she, “ and he is too busy
with other folks to give him much attention.”

Little Maher was the representative of a class that is
happily growing smaller year by year in our city. It is
altogether likely that a little inquiry into his case could
have placed the responsibility for his forlorn condition
considerably nearer home, upon someone who preferred
giving Providence the job to taking the trouble himself.
There are homeless children in New York. It is certain
that we shall always have our full share. Yet it is equally
certain that society is coming out ahead in its struggle
with this problem. In ten years, during which New
York added to her population one-fourth, the homeless¬
ness of our streets, taking the returns of the Children’s
Aid Society’s lodging-houses as the gauge, instead of in-

246 THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

creasing proportionally, has decreased nearly one-fifth ;
and of the Topsy element, it may be set down as a fact,
there is an end.

A SNUG CORNER ON A COLD NIGHT.

If we were able to argue from this a corresponding im¬
provement in the general lot of the poor, we should be on
the high road to the millennium. But it is not so. The

THE OUTCAST AND THE HOMELESS

247

showing is due mainly to the perfection of organized
charitable effoVt, that proceeds nowadays upon the sen¬
sible principle of putting out a fire, viz., that it must be
headed off, not run down, and therefore concerns itself
chiefly about the children. We are yet a long, a very
long way from a safe port. The menace of the Submerged
Tenth has not been blotted from the register of the
Potter’s Field, and though the “ twenty thousand poor
children who would not have known it was Christmas,”
but for public notice to that effect, be a benevolent fiction,
there are plenty whose brief lives have had little enough
of the embodiment of Christmas cheer and good-will in
them to make the name seem like a bitter mockery. Yet,
when all is said, this much remains, that we are steering
the right course. Against the drift and the head-winds of
an unparalleled immigration that has literally drained the
pauperism of Europe into our city for two generations,
against the false currents and the undertow of the tene¬
ment in our social life, we are making headway at last.

Every homeless child rescued from the street is a knot
made, a man or a woman saved, not for this day only, but
for all time. What if there be a thousand left ? There
is one less. What that one more on the wrong side of the
account might have meant will never be known till the
final reckoning. The records of jails and brothels and
poor-houses, for a hundred years to come, might but have
begun the tale.

When, in 1849, the Chief of Police reported that in
eleven wards there were 2,955 vagrants and dissolute
children under fifteen years of age, the boys all thieves
and the girls embryo prostitutes, and that ten per cent, of
the entire child population of school age in the city were
vagrants, there was no Children’s Aid Society to plead

248

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

their cause. There was a reformatory, and that winter the
American Female Guardian Society was incorporated, “ to
prevent vice and moral degradation ; ” but Mr. Brace had
not yet found his life-work, and little Mary Ellen had not
been born. The story of the legacy her sufferings left to
the world of children I have briefly told, and in the chap¬
ter on Industrials Schools some of the momentous results
of Mr. Brace’s devotion have been set forth. The story is
not ended ; it never will be, while poverty and want ex¬
ist in this great city. His greatest work was among the
homeless and the outcast. In the thirty-nine years during
which he was the life and soul of the Children’s Aid So¬
ciety it found safe country homes for 84,318 * poor city
children. And the work goes on. Very nearly already,
the army thus started on the road to usefulness and inde¬
pendence equals in numbers the whole body of children
that, four years before it took up its march, yielded its
Lost Tenth, as the Chief of Police bore witness, to the
prisons and perdition.

This great mass of children — did they all come from
the street ? Hot all of them. Hot even the larger num¬
ber. But they would have got there, all of them, had
not the Society blocked the way. That is how the race
of Topsies has been exterminated in Hew York. That in
this, of all fields, prevention is the true cure, and that a
farmer’s home is better for the city child that has none
than a prison or the best-managed public institution, are
the simple lessons it has taught and enforced by example
that has carried conviction at last. The conviction came
slowly and by degrees. The degrees were not always

* In this reckoning is included employment found for many big boys
and girls, who were taken as help, and were thus given the chance which
the city denied them. _ _

THE OUTCAST AND THE HOMELESS

249

creditable to sordid human nature that had put forth no
hand to keep the child from the gutter, and in the effort
to rescue it now saw only its selfish opportunity. There
are people yet at this day, whose offers to accept “a
strong and handsome girl of sixteen or so with sweet
temper,” as a cheap substitute for a paid servant — “ an
angel with mighty strong arms,” as one of the officers of
the Society indignantly put it once — show that the selfish
stage has not been quite passed. Such offers are rejected
with the emphatic answer : “We bring the children out
because they need you, not because you need them.” The
Society farms out no girls of sixteen with strong arms.
For them it finds ways of earning an honest living at such
wages as their labor commands, homes in the West, if they
wish it, where good husbands, not hard masters, are wait¬
ing for them. But, ordinarily, its effort is to bend the
twig at a much tenderer age. And in this effort it is as¬
sisted by the growth of a strong humane sentiment in the
West, that takes less account of the return the child can
make in work for his keep, and more of the child itself.
Time was when few children but those who were able to
help about the farm could be sure of a welcome. Nowa¬
days babies are in demand. Of all the children sent West
in the last two years, 14 per cent, were under five years,
43.6 per cent, over five and under ten years, 36.8 per
cent, over ten and under fifteen, and only 5.3 per cent,
over fifteen years of age. The average age of children
sent to Western homes in 1891 by the Children’s Aid So¬
ciety was nine years and forty days, and in 1892 nine years
and eight months, or an average of nine years, four
months, and twenty days for the two years.

It finds them in a hundred ways — in poverty-stricken
homes, on the Island, in its Industrial Schools, in the

250

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

street. Often they are brought to its office by parents
who are unable to take care of them. Provided they
are young enough, no questions are asked. It is not at
the child’s past, but at its future, that these men look.
That it comes from among bad people is the best reason
in the world why it should be put among those that are
good. That is the one care of the Society. Its faith
that the child, so placed, will respond and rise to their
level, is unshaken after these many years. Its experience
has knocked the bugbear of heredity all to flinders.

So that this one condition may be fulfilled, a constant
missionary work of an exceedingly practical and business¬
like character goes on in the Western farming communities,
where there is more to eat than there are mouths to fill,
and where a man’s children are yet his wealth. When in¬
terest has been stirred in a community to the point of
arousing demands for the homeless children, the best men
in the place — the judge, the pastor, the local editor, and
their peers — are prevailed upon to form a local committee
that passes upon all applications, and judges of the re¬
sponsibility and worthiness of the applicants. In this
way a sense of responsibility is cultivated that is the best
protection for the child in future years, should he need
any, which he very rarely does. On a day set by the
committee the agent arrives from Hew York with his
little troop. Each child has been comfortably and neatly
dressed in a new suit, and carries in his little bundle a
Bible as a parting gift from the Society. The committee
is on hand to receive them. So usually are half the
mothers of the town, who divide the children among
themselves and take them home to be cared for until the
next day. If there are any babies in the lot, it is always
hard work to make them give them up the next morning,

THE OUTCAST AND THE HOMELESS

251

and sometimes the company that gathers in the morning
at the town hall, for inspection and apportionment among
the farmers, has been unexpectedly depleted overnight.
From twenty and thirty miles around, the big-hearted
farmers come in their wagons to attend the show and to
negotiate with the committee. The negotiations are rarely
prolonged. Each picks out his child, sometimes two, often
more than one the same child. The committee umpires
between them. They all know each other, and the agent’s
knowledge of each child, gained on the way out and per¬
haps through previous acquaintance, helps to make the best
choice. There is no ceremony of adoption. That is left
to days to come, when the child and the new home have
learned to know each other, and to the watchful care of the
local committee. To any questions concerning faith or
previous condition that may be asked, the Society’s answer
is always the same. In substance it is this :

“ We do not know. Here is the child. Take him and
make a good Baptist, or Methodist, or Christian of any sect
of him ! That is your privilege and his gain. The fewer
questions you ask the better. Let his past be behind him
and the future his to work out. Love him for himself.” *

And in the spirit in which the advice is given it is
usually accepted. Night falls upon a joyous band return-

* It is inevitable, of course, that such a programme should steer clear
of the sectarian snags that lie plentifully scattered about. I have a
Roman Catholic paper before me in which the Society’s ‘ ‘ villainous
work, which consists chiefly in robbing the Catholic child of his faith,”
is hotly denounced in an address to the Archbishop of New York. Mr.
Brace’s policy was to meet such attacks with silence, and persevere in
his work. The Society still follows his plan. Catholic or Protestant —
the question is never raised. “No Catholic child,” said one of its
managers once to me, “ is ever brought to us. A pool' child is brought
and we care for it.”

252

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

ing home over the quiet country roads, the little stranger
snugly stowed among his new friends, one of them al¬
ready, with home and life before him.

And does the event justify the high hopes of that home
journey ? Almost always in the end, if the child was
young enough when it was sent out. Sometimes a change
lias to be made. Oftener the change is of name, in the
adoption that follows. Some of the boys get restless as
they grow up, and “ run about a good deal,” to the anguish
of the committee. A few are reported as having “ gone
to the bad.” But even these commonly come out all right
at last. One of them, of whom mention is made in the
Society’s thirty-fifth annual report, turned up after long
years as Mayor of his town and a member of the legisla¬
ture. “We can think,” wrote Mr. Brace before his death,
“ of little Five Points thieves who are now ministers of
the gospel or honest farmers ; vagrants and street chil¬
dren who are men in professional life ; and women who,
as teachers or wives of good citizens, are everywhere re¬
spected ; the children of outcasts or unfortunates whose
inherited tendencies have been met by the new environ¬
ment, and who are industrious and decent members of
society.” Only by their losing themselves does the Society
lose sight of them. Two or three times a year the agent
goes to see them all. In the big ledgers in St. Mark’s
Place each child who has been placed out has a page to
himself on which all his doings are recorded, as he is
heard of year by year. There are twenty-nine of these
canvas-bound ledgers now, and the stories they have to
tell would help anyone, who thinks he has lost faith in
poor human nature, to pick it up with the vow never to let
go of it again. I open one of them at random, and copy
the page — page 289 of ledger No. 23. It tells the story

THE OUTCAST AND THE HOMELESS

253

of an English boy, one of four who were picked up down
at Castle Garden twelve years ago. His mother was dead,
and he had not seen his father for five years before he
came here, a stowaway. He did not care, he said, where
they sent him, so long as it was not back to England :

June 15, 1880. James S - , aged fourteen years, Eng¬

lish ; orphan ; goes West with J. P. Brace.

Placed with J. R - , Neosha Rapids, Kan. January

26, 1880, James writes that he gets along pleasantly ; wrote
to him ; twenty-sixth annual report sent August 4th. July
14, 1880, Mr. and Mrs. R - write that James is im¬

pudent and tries them greatly. Wrote to him August IT,
1880 ; wrote again October 15th. October 21, 1880, Mr.

R - writes that they could not possibly get along with

James and placed him with Mr. G. H - , about five miles

from his house. Mr. H - is a good man and has a hand¬

some property. Wrote to James March 8, 1881. May 1,
1883, has left his place and has engaged to work for Mr.

H - — , of Hartford. James seems to be a pretty wild boy,

and the probability is he will turn out badly ; is very pro¬
fane and has a violent temper. April 17, 1887, Mrs.
Lyman Fry writes James was crushed to death in Kansas
City, where he was employed as brakeman on a freight
train.

October 16, 1889. — The above is a mistake. James
calls to-day at the office and says that after I saw him he
turned over a new leaf, and has made a pretty good char¬
acter for himself. Has worked steadily and has many
friends in Emporia. Has been here three days and wants
to look up his friends. Is grateful for having been sent
West.”

So James came out right after all, and all his sins are
forgiven. He was a fair sample of those who have

254

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

troubled the Society’s managers most, occasionally brought
undeserved reproach upon them, but in the end given
them the sweet joy of knowing that their faith and trust
were not put to shame. Many pages in the ledgers shine
with testimony to that. I shall mention but a single case,
the one to which I alluded in the introduction to the story
of the Industrial Schools. Andrew H. Burke was taken
by the Society’s agents from the nursery at Bandall’s
Island, thirty-three years ago, with a number of other boys,
and sent out to Nobleville, Ind. They heard from him
in St. Mark’s Place as joining the Sons of Temperance,
then as going to the war, a drummer boy ; next of his
going to college with a determination “ to be somebody
in the world.” He carried his point. That boy is now
the Governor of North Dakota. Last winter he wrote
to his kind friends, full of loyalty and gratitude, this
message for the poor children of New York :

“ To the boys now under your charge please convey my
best wishes, and that I hope that their pathways in life
will be those of morality, of honor, of health, and indus¬
try. With these four attributes as a guidance and incen¬
tive, I can bespeak for them an honorable and happy and
successful life. The goal is for them as well as for the
rich man’s son. They must learn to labor and to wait,
for 4 all things come to him who waits.’ Many times will
the road be rugged, winding, and long, and the sky over¬
cast with ominous clouds. Still, it will not do to fall by
the wayside and give up. If one does, the battle of life
will be lost.

“ Tell the boys I am proud to have had as humble a
beginning in life as they, and that I believe it has been
my salvation. I hope my success in life, if it can be so
termed, will be an incentive to them to struggle for a re-

THE OUTCAST AND THE HOMELESS

255

spectable recognition among their fellow-men. In this
country family name cuts but little figure. It is the char¬
acter of the man that wins recognition, hence I would
urge them to build carefully and consistently for the
future.”

The bigger boys do not always give so good an account
of themselves. I have already spoken of the difficulty
besetting the Society’s efforts to deal with that end of the
problem. The street in their case has had the first in¬
ning, and the battle is hard, often doubtful. Sometimes
it is lost. These are rarely sent West, early consignments
of them having stirred up a good deal of trouble there.
They go South, where they seem to have more patience
with them. “ The people there,” said an old agent of the
Society to me, with an enthusiasm that was fairly contagi¬
ous, “ are the most generous, kind-hearted people in the
world. And they are more easy going. If a boy turns
out badly, steals and runs away perhaps, a letter comes,
asking not for retaliation or upbraiding us for letting him
come, but hoping that he will do better, expressing sorrow
and concern, and ending usually with the big-hearted re¬
quest that we send them another in his place.” And
another comes, and, ten to one, does better. What lad is
there whose wayward spirit such kindness would not con¬
quer in the end ? *

These bigger boys come usually out of the Society’s
lodging-houses for homeless children. Of these I spoke

* The Society pleads for a farm of its own, close to the city, where it
can organize a “ farm school” for the older boys. There they could be
taken on probation and their fitness for the West be ascertained. They
would he more useful to the farmers and some trouble would be
avoided. Two farms, or three, to get as near to the family plan as pos¬
sible, would be better. The Children's Aid Society of Boston has three
farm schools, and its work is very successful.

256

THE' CHILDREN OF THE POOR

so fully in the account of the Street Arab in “ How the
Other Half Lives,” that I shall not here enter into any
detailed description of them. There are six, one for girls
in East Twelfth Street, lately moved from St. Mark’s
Place, and five for boys. The oldest and best known of
these is the Newsboys’ lodging-house in Duane Street,
now called the Brace Memorial Lodging-house for Boys.
The others are the East Side house in East Broadway,
the Tompkins Square house, the West Side house at
Seventh Avenue and Thirty-second Street, and the lodg¬
ing-house at Forty-fourth Street and Second Avenue. A
list of the builders’ names emphasizes what I said a while
ago about the unostentatious charity of rich New Yorkers.
I have never seen them published anywhere except in
the Society’s reports, but they make good and instructive
reading, and here they are in the order in which I gave
the houses they built, beginning with the one on East
Broadway : Miss Catharine L. Wolfe, Mrs. Bobert L.
Stuart, John Jacob Astor, Morris K. Jesup. The girls’
home in East Twelfth Street, just completed, was built
as a memorial to Miss Elizabeth Davenport Wheeler by
her family, and is to be known as the Elizabeth Home.
The list might be greatly extended by including the
twenty-one Industrial Schools, which are in fact links in
the same great chain ; but that is not to the present pur¬
pose, and probably I should not be thanked for doing it.
I have already transgressed enough. The wealth that
seeks its responsibilities among the outcast children in
this city, is of the kind that prefers that it should remain
unidentified and unheralded to the world in connection
with its benefactions.

It is in these lodging-houses that one may study the
homelessness that mocks the miles of brick walls which

THE OUTCAST AND THE HOMELESS

257

enclose New York’s tenements, but not its homes. Only
with special opportunities is it nowadays possible to study
it anywhere else in New York. One may still hunt up
by night waifs who make their beds in alleys and cellars
and abandoned sheds. This last winter two stable fires
that broke out in the middle of the night routed out lit¬
tle colonies of boys, who slept in the hay and probably set
it on fire. But one no longer stumbles over homeless waifs
in the street gutters. One has to hunt for them and to
know where. The “ cruelty man ” knows and hunts them
so assiduously that the game is getting scarcer every day.
The doors of the lodging-houses stand open day and night,
offering shelter upon terms no cold or hungry lad would
reject : six cents for breakfast and supper, six for a clean
bed. They are not pauper barracks, and he is expected
to pay ; but he can have trust if his pockets are empty, as
they probably are, and even a bookblack’s kit or an armful
of papers to start him in business, if need be. The only
conditions are that he shall wash and not swear, and at¬
tend evening school when his work is done. It is not pos¬
sible to-day that an outcast child should long remain sup¬
perless and without shelter in New York, unless he prefers
to take his chances with the rats of the gutter. Such chil¬
dren there are, but they are no longer often met. The
winter’s cold drives even them to cover and to accept the
terms they rejected in more hospitable seasons. Even the
ce dock-rat ” is human.

It seems a marvel that he is, sometimes, when one hears
the story of what drove him to the street. Drunkenness
and brutality at home helped the tenement do it, half the
time. It drove his sister out to a life of shame, too, as
likely as not. I have talked with a good many of the
boys, trying to find out, and heard some yarns and some
17

258

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

stories that were true. In seven cases out of ten, of those
who had homes to go to, it was that, when we got down
to hard pan. A drunken father or mother made the street
preferable to the house, and to the street they went.* In
other cases death, perhaps, had broken up the family and
thrown the boys upon the world. That was the story of
one of the boys I tried to photograph at a quiet game of
“ craps ” (see picture on page 122) in the hallway of the
Duane Street lodging-house — James Brady. Father and
mother had both died two months after they came here
from Ireland, and he went forth from the tenement alone
and without a friend, but not without courage. He just
walked on until he stumbled on the lodging-house, and fell
into a job of selling papers. James, at the age of sixteen,
was being initiated into the mysteries of the alphabet in
the evening school. He was not sure that he liked it.
The German boy who took a hand in the game, and who
made his grub and bed money, when he was lucky, by
picking up junk, had just such a career. The third, the
bootblack, gave his reasons briefly for running away from
his Philadelphia home : “ Me muther wuz all the time
hittin’ me when I cum in the house, so I cum away.” So
did a German boy I met there, if for a slightly different
reason. He was fresh from over the sea, and had not yet
learned a word of English. In his own tongue he told why

* I once questioned a class of 71 boys between eight and twelve years
old in a reform school, with this result : 22 said they blacked boots ; 36
sold papers ; 26 did both ; 40 “ slept out ; ” but only 3 of them all were
fatherless, 11 motherless, showing that they slept out by choice. The
father probably had something to do with it most of the time. Three-
fourths of the lads stood up when I asked them if they had been to
Central Park. The teacher asked one of those who did not rise, a little
shaver, if he had never been in the Park. “No, mem I ” he replied,
“ me father he went that time.’’

THE OUTCAST AND THE HOMELESS

259

he came. His father sent him to a gymnasium, but the
Latin was “ zu schwer ” for him, and “ der Herr Papa sagt
heraus ! ” He was evidently a boy of good family, but slow.
His father could have taken no better course, certainly, to
cure him of that defect, if he did not mind the danger of it.

There are always some whom robody owns. Boys who
come from a distance perhaps, and are cast up in our
streets with all the other drift that sets toward the city’s
maelstrom. But the great mass were born of the mael¬
strom and ground by it into what they are. Of fourteen
lads rounded up by the officers of the Society for the Pre¬
vention of Cruelty to Children one night this past sum¬
mer, in the alleys and byways down about the printing
offices, where they have their run, two were from Brook¬
lyn, one a runaway from a good home in White Plains,
and the rest from the tenements of Hew York. Only one
was really without home or friends. That was perhaps
an unusually — I was going to say good showing; but I
do not know that it can be called a good showing that ten
boys who had homes to go to should prefer to sleep out
in the street. The boy who has none would have no other
choice until someone picked him up and took him in.
The record of the 84,318 children that have been sent to
Western homes in thirty-nine years show that 17,383 of
them had both parents living, and therefore presumably
homes, such as they were; 5,892 only the father, and
11,954 the mother, living; 39,406 had neither father nor
mother. The rest either did not know, or did not tell.
That again includes an earlier period when the streets were
full of vagrants without home-ties, so that the statement,
as applied to to-day, errs on the other side. The truth
lies between the two extremes. Four-fifths, perhaps, are
outcasts, the rest homeless waifs.

260

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

The great mass, for instance, of the newsboys who cry
their “ extrees ” in the streets by day, and whom one meets
in the Duane Street lodging-house or in Theatre Alley
and about the Post-office by night, are children with
homes who thus contribute to the family earnings, and
sleep out, if they do, because they have either not sold
their papers or gambled away the money at “ craps,” and
are afraid to go home. It was for such a reason little Giu¬
seppe Margalto and his chum made their bed in the ven¬
tilating chute at the Post-office on the night General Sher¬
man died, and were caught by the fire that broke out in
the mail-room toward midnight. Giuseppe was burned to
death ; the other escaped to bring the news to the dark
Crosby Street alley in which he had lived. Giuseppe did
not die his cruel death in vain. A much stricter watch
has been kept since upon the boys, and they are no longer
allowed to sleep in many places to which they formerly
had access.

A bed in the street, in an odd box or corner, is good
enough for the ragamuffin who thinks the latitude of his
tenement unhealthy, when the weather is warm. It is
cooler there, too, and it costs nothing, if one can keep out
of the reach of the policeman. It is no new experience to
the boy. Half the tenement population, men, women, and
children, sleep out of doors, in streets and yards, on the
roof, or on the fire-escape, from May to October. In
winter the boys can curl themselves up on the steam-pipes
in the newspaper offices that open their doors after mid¬
night on secret purpose to let them in. When these fail,
there is still the lodging-house as a last resort. To the lad
whom ill-treatment or misfortune drove to the street it is
always a friend. To the chronic vagrant it has several
drawbacks : the school, the wash, the enforced tax for the

THE OUTCAST AND THE HOMELESS

261

supper and the bed, that cuts down the allowance for
“ craps,” his all-absorbing passion, and finally the occa¬
sional inconvenient habit of mothers and fathers to come
looking there for their missing boys. The police send
them there, and sometimes they take the trouble to call

when the boys have gone to bed, taking them at what they
consider a mean disadvantage. However, most of them
do not trouble themselves to that extent. They let the
strap hang idle till the boy comes back, if he ever does.

Last February Harry Quill, aged fifteen, disappeared
from the tenement Ho. 45 Washington Street, and

262

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

though he was not heard of again for many weeks, his
people never bothered the police. Not until his dead body
was fished up from the air-shaft at the bottom of which it
had lain two whole months, was his disappearance ex¬
plained. But the full explanation came only the other
day, in September, when one of his playmates was ar¬
rested for throwing him down and confessed to doing it.
Harry was drunk, he said, and attacked him on the roof
with a knife. In the struggle he threw him into the air-
shaft. Fifteen years old, and fighting drunk ! The mere
statement sheds a stronger light on the sources of child
vagabondage in our city than I could do, were I to fill the
rest of my book with an enumeration of them.

However, it is a good deal oftener the father who gets
drunk than the boy. Not all, nor even a majority, of the
boys one meets at the lodging-houses are of that stamp.
If they were, they would not be there long. They have
their faults, and the code of morals proclaimed by the
little newsboys, for instance, is not always in absolute
harmony with that generally adopted by civilized society.
But even they have virtues quite as conspicuous. They
are honest after their fashion, and tremendously impartial
in a fight. They are bound to see fair play, if they all
have to take a hand. It generally ends that way. A good
many of them — the great majority in all the other lodging-
houses but that in Duane Street — work steadily in shops
and factories, making their home there because it is the
best they have, and because there they are among friends
they know. Two little brothers, John and Willie, attracted
my attention in the Newsboys’ Lodging-house by the
sturdy way in which they held together, back to back,
against the world, as it were. Willie was thirteen and
John eleven years old. Their story was simple and soon

THE OUTCAST AND THE HOMELESS

263

told. Their mother died, and their father, who worked in
a gas-house, broke up the household, unable to maintain
it. The boys went out to shift for themselves, while he
made his home in a Bowery lodging-house. The oldest of
the brothers was then earning three dollars a week in a
factory ; the younger was selling newspapers, and making
out. The day I first saw him he came in from his route
early — it was raining hard — to get dry trousers out for
his brother against the time he should be home from the
factory. There was no doubt the two would hew their
way through the world together. The right stuff was in
them, as in the two other lads, also brothers, I found in
the Tompkins Square lodging-house. Their parents had
both died, leaving them to care for a palsied sister and a
little brother. They sent the little one to school, and
went to work for the sister. Their combined earnings at
the shop were just enough to support her and one of the
brothers who stayed with her. The other went to the
lodging-house, where he could live for eighteen cents a
day, turning the rest of his earnings into the family fund.
With this view of these homeless lads, the one who goes
much among them is not surprised to hear of their club¬
bing together, as they did in the Seventh Avenue lodging-
house, to fit out a little ragamuffin, who was brought in
shivering from the street, with a suit of clothes. There
was not one in the crowd that chipped in who had a wThole
coat to his back.

It was in this lodging-house I first saw Buffalo. He
was presented to me the night I took the picture of my
little vegetable-peddling friend, Edward, asleep on the
front bench in evening school. Edward was nine years
old and an orphan, but hard at work every day earning
his own living by shouting from a pedlar’s cart. He

264

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

could not be made to sit for bis picture, and I took him
at a disadvantage — in a double sense, for he had not made

his toilet ; it was in the
days of the threatened
water - famine, and the
boys had been warned
not to waste water in
washing, an injunction
they cheerfully obeyed.
I was anxious not to
have the boy disturbed,
so the spelling -class
went right on while I set
up the camera. It was
an original class, orig¬
inal in its answers as in
its looks. This was what
I heard while I focused
on poor Eddie :

The teacher: “Cheat!
spell cheat.”

Boy spells correctly.
Teacher : “Bight !
What is it to cheat ? ”
Boy: “To skin one,

like Tommy - ”

The teacher cut the
explanation short, and
ordering up another boy,
bade him spell “ nerve.”
He did it. “What is
; “ what does it mean ? ”
said the boy, and at that

BUFFALO.

nerve ? ” demanded the teacher
“ Cheek ! don’t you know,”

THE OUTCAST AND THE HOMELESS

265

moment I caught Buffalo blacking my sleeping pedlar’s
face with ink, just in time to prevent his waking him up.
Then it was that I heard the disturber’s story. He was a
character, and no mistake. He had run away from
Buffalo, whence his name, “ beating ” his way down on

NIGHT-SCHOOL IN THE WEST SIDE LODGING-HOUSE. EDWARD, THE LITTLE PEDLAR,
CAUGHT NAPPING.

the trains, until he reached New York. He “shined”
around until he got so desperately hard up that he had to
sell his kit. Just about then he was discovered by an
artist, who paid him to sit for him in his awful rags with
his tousled hair that had not known the restraint of a cap
for months. “ Oh ! it was a daisy job,” sighed Buffalo,

266

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

at the recollection. He had only to sit still and crack
jokes. Alas ! Buffalo’s first effort at righteousness upset
him. He had been taught in the lodging-house that to
be clean was the first requisite of a gentleman, and on his
first pay-day he went bravely, eschewing “ craps,” and
bought himself a new coat and had his hair cut. When,
beaming with pride, he presented himself at the studio in
his new character, the artist turned him out as no longer
of any use to him. I am afraid that Buffalo’s ambition
to be “ like folks,” received a shock by this mysterious
misfortune, that spoiled his career. A few days after that
he was caught by a policeman in the street, at his old
game of “ craps.” The officer took him to the police
court and arraigned him as a hardened offender. To
the judge’s question if he had any home, he said frankly
yes ! in Buffalo, but he had run away from it.

u How, if I let you go, will you go right back ? ” asked
the magistrate, looking over the desk at the youthful
prisoner. Buffalo took off his tattered cap and stood up
on the foot-rail so that he could reach across the desk
with his hand.

“ Put it there, jedge ! ” he said. “ I’ll go. Square and
honest, I will.”

And he went. I never heard of him again.

The evening classes are a sort of latch-key to knowledge
for belated travellers on the road. They make good use
of it, if they are late, as instanced in the class in history
in the Duane Street lodging- house, which the younger
boys irreverently speak of as “ The Soup-house Gang.”
I found it surprisingly proficient, if it was in its shirt¬
sleeves, and there were at least a couple of pupils in it
who promised to make their mark. All of its members
are working lads, and not a few of them are capitalists in

THE OUTCAST AND THE HOMELESS

267

a small but very promising way. There is a savings
bank attached to each lodging-house, with the super¬
intendent as president and cashier at once. No less
than $5,197 was deposited by the 11,435 boys who found
shelter in them in 1891. They were not all depositors, of
course. In the Duane Street lodging-house, out of 7,614
newsboys who were registered, 1,10S developed the in¬
stinct of saving, or were able to lay by something. Their
little pile at the end of the year held the respectable
sum of $3,162.39.* It is safe to say that the interest of
the Soup-house Gang in it was proportionate to its other
achievements. In the West Side lodging-house, where
nearly a thousand boys were taken in during the year, 54
patronized the bank and saved up $360.11. I found a
little newsboy there who sells papers in the Grand Central
Depot, and whose bank-book showed deposits of $200.
Some day that boy, for all he has a “ tough ” father and
mother who made him prefer the lodging-house as a home
at the age of nine years, will be running the news business
on the road as the capable “boss” of any number of lads
of his present age. He neglects no opportunity to learn
what the house has to offer, if he can get to the school in
time. On the whole, the teachers report the boys as
slow at their books, and no wonder. A glimpse of little
Eddie, in from the cart after his day’s work and drop¬
ping asleep on the bench from sheer weariness, more than
excuses him, I think. Eddie may have a chance now to
learn something better than peddling apples. They have
lately added to the nightly instruction there, I am told,
the feature of manual training in the shape of a printing-

* The lodging-houses are following a noteworthy precedent. From
the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism, organized in the begin¬
ning of this century, sprang the first savings bank in the country.

268

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

office, to which the boys have taken amazingly and which
promises great things.

There was one pupil in that evening class, at whose
door the charge of being “ slow ” could not be laid, indif¬
ferent though his scholarship was in anything but the
tricks of the street. He was the most hopeless young
scamp I ever knew, and withal so aggravatingly funny
that it was impossible not to laugh, no matter how much
one felt like scolding. He lived by “ shinin’ ” and kept
his kit in a saloon to save his dragging it home every
night. When I last saw him he was in disgrace, for not
showing up at the school four successive nights. He ex¬
plained that the policeman who “collared” him “fur
fiffhtin’ ” was to blame. It was the third time he had
been locked up for that offence. When he found out
that I wanted to know his history, he set about helping
me with a readiness to oblige that was very promising.
Did he have any home ? Oh, yes, he had.

“ Well, where do you live ?” I asked.

“ Here ! ” said Tommy, promptly, with just a suspicion
of a wink at the other boys who were gathered about
watching the examination. He had no father; didn’t
know where his mother was.

“ Is she any relation to you ! ” put in one of the boys,
gravely. Tommy disdained the question. It turned out
that his mother had been after him repeatedly and that
he was an incorrigible runaway. She had at last given
him up for good. While his picture was being “ took ”
— it will be found on page 100 of this book — one of the
lads reported that she was at the door again, and Tommy
broke and ran. He returned just when they closed the
doors of the house for the night, with the report that
“ the old woman was a fake.”

THE ‘ SOUP’HOUSK GANG,” CLASS IN HISTORY IN THE DUANE STREET NEWSBOYS’ LODGING-HOUSE.

270

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

The crippled boys’ brush shop is a feature of the lodg¬
ing-house in East Forty-fourth Street. It is the bete noire
of the Society, partly on account of the difficulty of mak¬
ing it go without too great an outlay, partly on account
of the boys themselves. They are of all the city’s out¬
casts the most unfortunate and the hardest to manage.
Their misfortune has soured their temper, and as a rule
they are troublesome and headstrong. No wonder.
There seems to be no room for a poor crippled lad in
New York. There are plenty of institutions that are af¬
ter the well and able-bodied, but for the cripples the only
chance is to shrivel and die in the Randall’s Island Asy¬
lum. No one wants them. The brush shop pays them
wages that enables them to make their way, and the
boys turn out enough brushes, if a market could only be
found for them. It is a curious and saddening fact that
the competition that robs it of its market comes from
the prisons, to block the doors of which the Society ex¬
pends all its energies — the prisons of other States than our
own at that. The managers have a good word to say for
the trades unions, which have been very kind to them,
they say, in this matter of brushes, trying to help the
boys, but without much success. The shop is able to em¬
ploy only a small fraction of the number it might benefit,
were it able to dispose of its wares readily. Despite their
misfortunes the cripples manage to pick up and enjoy the
good things they find in their path as they hobble through
life. Last year they challenged the other crippled boys
in the hospital on Randall’s Island to a champion game of
base-ball, and beat them on their crutches with a score of
42 to 31. The game was played on the hospital lawn,
before an enthusiastic crowd of wrecks, young and old,
and must have been a sight to see.

THE OUTCAST AND THE HOMELESS

271

A worse snag than the competition of the prisons is
struck by the Society in the cheap Bowery lodging-houses
— “ hotels” they are called — that attract the homeless
boys with their greater promise of freedom. There are
no troublesome rules to obey there, no hours to keep, and
very little to pay. An ordinance of the Health Depart¬
ment, which exercises jurisdiction over those houses, pro¬
hibits the admission of boys under sixteen years old, but
the prohibition is easily evaded, and many slip in to en¬
counter there the worst of all company for such as they.
The lowest of these houses, that are also the cheapest and
therefore the ones the boys patronize, are the nightly
rendezvous of thieves and, as the police have more than
once pointed out, murderers as well. There should be
a much stricter supervision over them — supervision by the
police as well as by the health officers — and the age limit
should be put at eighteen years instead of sixteen. There
is this much to be said for the lodging - houses, however,
that it is a ticklish subject to approach until the city as a
municipality has swept before its own door. They at least
offer a bed, such as it is, and shelter after their fashion.
The hospitality the city offers to its homeless poor in the
police-station lodging-rooms is one of the scandals of a
civilized age. The moral degradation of an enforced
stay in these dens is immeasurable. To say that they
are the resort of tramps and “ bums ” who know and
deserve nothing better, is begging the question. It is true
of the majority, but that very fact consigns the helpless
minority, too poor to pay and too proud to beg, to a fate
worse than death. I myself picked from the mass of
festering human filth in a police-station lodging-room,
one night last winter, six young lads, not one of whom
was over eighteen, and who for one reason or another had
18

272

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

been stranded there that night. They were not ruffians
either, but boys who to all appearances had come from
good homes, the memory of which might not efface the
lessons learned that night in a lifetime. The scandal has
been denounced over and over again by grand juries, by
the Police Commissioners, and by philanthropists who
know of the facts, and efforts without end have been
made to get the city authorities to substitute some decent
system of municipal hospitality for this unutterable dis¬
grace, as other cities have done, but they have all been
wrecked by political jobbery or official apathy.

A thing to be profoundly thankful for is the practical
elimination of the girl vagrant from our social life. Ten
years ago, Broadway from Fourteenth Street up was
crowded with little girls who, under the pretence of ped¬
dling flowers and newspapers, pandered to the worst immo¬
rality. They went in regular gangs, captained and em¬
ployed by a few conscienceless old harpies, who took the
wages of their infamy and paid them with blows and
curses if they fell short of their greed. The police and
the officers of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Children put an end to this traffic after a long fight, send¬
ing the old wretches to jail and some of their victims to
the reformatories. One of the gangs that were broken
up had a rendezvous in a stable in Thirtieth Street, near
Broadway. The girls had latch-keys and went out and in
at all hours of the night. To-day the flower-girl of ten¬
der years is scarcely ever met with in "New York. Even
the news-girl has disappeared almost entirely and left the
field to the boys. Those who are not at work at home or
in the shop have been gathered in by the agencies for
their rescue, that have multiplied with the growth of the
conviction that girl vagrancy is so much more corrosive

THE OUTCAST AND THE HOMELESS

273

than boy vagabondism, as it adds sexual immorality to the
other dangers of the street. In 1881 the society’s lodg¬
ing-house in St. Mark’s Place sheltered 1,287 girls. Their
number has gone down since, as the census has gone up,
until last year it had fallen to 335, and even these were no
longer vagrants, but wayward daughters brought by their
parents to be trained to obedience and industry. In the
same period, during which the city’s population increased
more than one-fourth, the increase being very largely
made up of just the material to feed its homelessness,
the register of the boys’ lodging-houses showed a reduc¬
tion from 13,155 to 11,435.

In the introductory chapter I pointed out, as a result
of the efforts made in behalf of the children in the past
generation, not only by the Children’s Aid Society, but
by many kindred organizations, that the commitments
of girls and women for vagrancy fell off between the years

18

CHART A.

274

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

1860 and 1890 from 5,880 to 1,980, or from 1 in every 138^
persons to 1 in every 780 of a population that had more
than doubled in the interval, while the commitments of
petty girl thieves fell between 1865 and 1890 from 1 in
743 to 1 in 7,500. Illustrated by diagram this last state¬
ment looks this way, the year 1869 being substituted as
the starting-point ; it had almost exactly the same num¬
ber of commitments as 1865 (see Chart A).

The year is at the top, and its record of commitments of
petty girl thieves at the bottom. The tendency is
steadily downward, it will be seen, and downward here is
the safe course. The police court arraignments for what
is known as juvenile delinquency, which is, in short, all the
mischief that is not crime under the code, make the fol¬
lowing showing, starting with the year 1875, the upper
line representing the boys and the lower the girls :

CHART B.

THE OUTCAST AND THE HOMELESS

275

Taking, finally, the commitments of girls under twenty
for all causes, in thirteen years, we have this showing :

CHART C.

These diagrams would be more satisfactory if they al-

276

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

ways meant exactly what they seem to show. The trouble
is that they share in the general inapplicability to the pur¬
poses of scientific research of all public reports in this city
(save those of the Health Department, which is fortunate
in possessing a responsible expert statistician in Dr. Roger
S. Tracy) by reason of lack of uniformity or otherwise.
When one gets down to the bottom of a slump like that
between the years 1888 and 1889, in the last diagram, one
is as likely to find a negligent police clerk or some acci¬
dental change of classification there as an economic fact.
Something like this last is, I believe, hidden in this par¬
ticular one. The figures for 1891 maintain the point
reached in 1887 and in 1890. However, the important
thing is that the decrease has gone on more or less stead¬
ily through good years and bad since the children’s soci¬
eties took the field, while the population has increased as
never before. Had these forms of disorder even held
their own, the slope should have been steadily upward,
not downward. In this there is encouragement, surely.
There is enough left to battle with. The six lodging-
houses sheltered in the last twelve years 149,994 children,
8,820 of them girls. We are not near the end yet. The
problem is a great one, but the efforts on foot to solve it
are great and growing. It has been a forty years’ fight
with poverty and ignorance and crime, and it is only just
begun. But the first blow is half the battle, it is said,
and it has been struck in Hew York, and struck to win.

CHAPTER XV.

PUTTING A PREMIUM ON PAUPERISM

IX spite of all this labor and effort, in the face of the
fact that half of the miseries of society are at last ac¬
knowledged to be due to the sundering of the home-tie in
childhood, and that therefore the remedy lies in restoring
it, where that can be done, as early as possible, we have
in Xew York a city of mighty institutions, marshalling a
standing army of nearly or quite sixteen thousand chil¬
dren, year in and year out.* Homes they are sometimes
called ; but too many of them are not homes in the sav¬
ing sense. Those are, that are merely half-way houses to
the ultimate family home that shall restore to the child
what it has lost. Failing in that, they become public ten¬
ements, with most of the bad features of the tenement
left out, but the worst retained : the smothering of the
tenant’s individuality. He is saved from becoming a
tough to become an automaton.

It is money scattered without judgment — not poverty —
that makes the pauper. It is money scattered without
judgment — not poverty — that marshals the greater part of
this army. Money backed up by pharisaical sectarian¬
ism. Where two such powerful factors combine, politics
is never far in the rear, though modestly invisible to the

* That is the average number constantly in asylums. With those
that come and go, it foots up quite 25,000 children a year that are a
public charge.

278

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

naked eye. To this irresponsible combination — conspir¬
acy it might be called without stretching the point far —
the care of the defenceless child that comes upon the pub¬
lic for support has been handed over without check or con¬
trol of any sort. Worse, a premium has been put upon
his coming, upon child desertion in our community. What
are the causes of this ?

They have been stated often and urgently enough by
those whose great experience gave weight to their argu¬
ments. Clothed in legal phrase, they may be found
summed up in the law of 1875, which ordains that a de¬
pendent child shall be committed to an institution con¬
trolled by persons of the same religious faith as its par¬
ents, when that can be done, and that the county shall
pay the child’s board. It was a tremendous bid for child
pauperism, and poverty, ignorance, and greed were not
slow to respond. Under this so-called “ religious clause,”
the number of children thrown upon the county, in New
York City alone, was swelled, between 1875 and 1890,
from 9.363 to 16.358, this statement including only the
twenty-nine institutions that can demand or do receive
public money toward their support. Some of them, that
have come into existence since it was passed, were direct¬
ly created by the law. It was natural that this should
be so, “ because it provided exactly the care which par¬
ents desired for their children, that of persons of their
own religious faith, and supplied ample means for the
children’s support ; while, although the funds were to be
derived from public sources, yet since the institutions were
to be managed by private persons, the stigma which for¬
tunately attaches to public relief was removed. Thus
every incentive to parents to place their children upon the
public for support was created by the provisions of the

PUTTING A PREMIUM ON PAUPERISM

279

law, and every deterrent was removed ; for the law de¬
manded nothing from the parent in return for the sup¬
port of the child, and did not deprive him of any of his
rights over the child, although relieving him of every
duty toward it.” * But New York City went a step fur¬
ther, by having special laws passed securing a stated in¬
come from the money raised by local taxation to nine
of its largest institutions. This is where the trail of the
politician might perhaps be traced with an effort. The
amount drawn by the nine in 1890 was nearly a million
dollars, while the total so expended footed up in that year
over sixteen hundred thousand dollars. New York City
to-day supports one dependent child to each one hundred
of its population, and the tax levied, directly and indirect¬
ly, for the purpose is about a dollar a head for every man,
woman, and child in the city. The State in 1888 sup¬
ported one child to every 251 of its population. The
State of California, which had also gone into the whole¬
sale charity business, supported one dependent child to
every 290 of its population, while Michigan, which had
gone out of it, taking her children out of the poor-houses
and sending them to a State public school, with the pro¬
viso that thenceforth parents surrendering their children
to be public charges should lose all rights over or to their
custody, services, or earnings, had only 1 to every 10,000
of its people. t

That proviso cut the matter to the quick. The law de¬
clared the school to be a “ temporary home for dependent

* Report upon the Care of Dependent Children in New York City and
elsewhere, to the State Board of Charities, by Commissioner Josephine
Shaw Lowell. December, 1889.

f Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell on Dependent Children. Report of
1889.

280

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

children, where they shall be detained only until they can
be placed in family homes.” That is a very different thing
from the institution that, with its handsome buildings, its
lawns, and its gravelled walks, looks to the poor parent like
a grand boarding-school where his child can be kept, free
of charge to him, and taught on terms that seem alluringly
like the privileges enjoyed by the rich, until it shall be old
enough to earn wages and help toward the family sup¬
port ; very different from the plan of sending the boy to
the asylum to be managed, the moment parental author¬
ity fails at home. To what extent these things are done
in New York may be inferred from the statement of the
Superintendent of the Juvenile Asylum, which contains
an average of a thousand children, that three-fourths of
the inmates could not be sent to free homes in the West
because their relatives would not consent to their going.*
It was only last summer that my attention was attracted,
while on a visit to this Juvenile Asylum, to a fine-
looking little fellow who seemed much above the aver¬
age of the class in which I found him. On inquiring as
to the causes that had brought him to that place, I
was shocked to find that he was the son of a public offi¬
cial, well-known to me, whose income from the city’s
treasury was sufficient not only to provide for the sup¬
port of his family, but to enable him to gratify somewhat

* Anna T. Wilson : Some Arguments for the Boarding-out of De¬
pendent Children in the State of New York. This opposition the
Superintendent explains in his report for 1891, to he due in part to the
lying stories about abuse in the West, told by bad boys who return to
the city. He adds, however, that “ oftentimes the most strenuous op¬
position . . . is made by step-mothers, uncles, aunts, and cousins,”

and is “due in the majority of cases not to any special interest in the
child’s welfare, but to self-interest, the relative wishing to obtain a sit¬
uation for the boy in order to get his weekly wages.”

PUTTING A PREMIUM ON PAUPERISM

281

expensive private tastes as well. The boy had been there
two years, during which time the Asylum had drawn for
his account from the public funds about $240, at the per
capita rate of $110 for each inmate and his share of the
school money. His father, when I asked him why the
boy was there, told me that it was because he would insist
upon paying unauthorized visits to his grandmother in the
country. There was no evidence that he was otherwise
unmanageable. Seeing my surprise, he put the question,
as if that covered the ground : “ Well, now ! where would
you put him in a better place ? ” It was a handsome com¬
pliment to the Asylum, which as a reform school it perhaps
deserved ; but it struck me, all the same, that he could
hardly have put him in a worse place, on all accounts.

I do not know how many such cases there were in the
Asylum then. I hope not many. But it is certain that
our public institutions are full of children who have par¬
ents amply able, but unwilling, to support them. From
time to time enough such cases crop out to show how
common the practice is. Reference to cases 59,703, 59,-
851, and 60,497 in the report of the Society for the Pre¬
vention of Cruelty to Children (1892), will discover some
striking instances that were ferreted out by the Society’s
officers. All of the offenders were in thriving business.
One of them kept a store in Newark — in another State —
and was not even a resident of the city. He merely
“ honored it with the privilege of paying his children’s
boarding-school expenses in the institution.” They were
all Italians. These people seem to consider that it is their
right to thus feed at the public crib. Perhaps it is the
first quickening of the seed bf municipal politics that
sprouts so energetically among them in the slums, under
the teaching of their Irish patrons.

282

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

When Mrs. Lowell inspected the New York City insti¬
tutions in 1889, she found “that of 20,384 individual
children sheltered in them, 4,139 had been that year re¬
turned to parents or friends, that is, to the persons who
had given them up to be paupers ; that there were only
1,776 orphans among them, and 4,987 half orphans, of
whom 2,247 had living fathers, who presumably ought to
have been made to support their children themselves.”
Three years later, the imperfect returns to a circular in¬
quiry sent out by the State Board of Charities, showed that
of 18,556 children in institutions in this State, 3,671, or
less than twenty per cent., were orphans. The rest then
had, or should have, homes. Doubtless, many were homes
of which they were well rid; but all experience shows
that there must have been far too many of the kind that
were well rid of them , and to that extent the tax-payers
were robbed and the parents and the children pauperized.
And that even that other kind were much better off in the
long run, their being in the institution did not guarantee.
Children, once for all, cannot be successfully reared in regi¬
ments witbin the narrow rules and the confinement of an
asylum, if success is to be measured by the development
of individual character. Power to regulate or shorten
their stay is not vested to any practical extent or purpose
in any outside agency. Within, with every benevolent
desire to do the right, every interest of the institution as
a whole tends to confuse the perception of it. The more
children, the more money ; the fewer children, the less
money. A thousand children can be more economically
managed for $110,000 than five hundred for half the
money. The fortieth annual report of the Juvenile
Asylum (1891) puts it very plainly, in this statement on
page 23 : “ Until the capacity of the Asylum was ma«

PUTTING A PREMIUM ON PAUPERISM

283

terially increased, an annual deficit ranging between
$5,000 and $10,000 had to be covered by appeals to pri¬
vate contributors.” Now, it runs not only the New
York house but its Western agency as well on its in¬
come.

The city pays the bills, but exercises no other control
over the institutions. It does not even trouble itself with
counting the children.* The committing magistrate con¬
sults and is guided more or less by the Officers of the
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, in his
choice of the institution into which the child is put. But
both are bound by the law that imposes the “ faitli-test.”
The faitli-test, as enforced by civil law anywhere, is
absurd. The parents of the eighty per cent, of children
in institutions who were not orphans, split no theological
hairs in ridding themselves of their support. Backed by
the money sacks of a great and wealthy city, it is injurious
humbug. This is not the perfection of organized charit¬
able effort for the rescue of the children of which I spoke,
but rather the perversion of it.

It is reasonable to ask that if the public is to pay the
piper, the public should have the hiring of him too. A
special city officer is needed to have this matter in charge.
Nearly six years ago Commissioner Lowell submitted a

* It will do so hereafter. This autumn the discovery was made that
the city was asked to pay for more children than there ought to be in
the institutions according to the record of commitments. The comp¬
troller sent two of his clerks to count all the children. The result was
to show slipshod book-keeping, if nothing worse, in certain cases.
Hereafter the ceremony of counting the children will he gone through
every six months. Nothing could more clearly show the irresponsible
character of the whole business and the need of a change, lest we drift
into corporate pauperism in addition to encouraging the vice in the
individual.

284

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

draft for a bill creating a department for the care of de¬
pendent children in New York City, with a commissioner
at the head whose powers would have been an effective
check upon the evil tendencies of the present law. But
we travel slowly along the path of municipal reform, and
the commissioner is yet a dream. Some day we may
wake up and find him there, and then we shall be ready,
by and by, to carry out the ideal plan of placing those
children, for whom free homes cannot be found, out at
board in families where they shall come by their rights,
denied them by institution life. Then, too, we shall find,
I think, that there is a good deal less of the problem than
we thought. The managers of the Union Temporary
Home in Philadelphia decided, after thirty one years of
work, to close the House and put the children out to
board, because experience had convinced them that “ life
in the average institution is not so good for children as
life in the average home.” The intelligence of the con¬
clusion, and the earnestness with which they presented
it, guaranteed that their “ Home ” had been above the
average.

“ The testimony of two gentlemen on our Board of Coun¬
cil,” they reported, “ both experienced as heads of great
industrial enterprises, is that institution boys are generally
the least desirable apprentices. They have been dulled in
faculty, by not having been daily exercised in the use of
themselves in small ways ; have marched in platoons ;
have done everything in squads ; have had all the parti¬
culars of life arranged for them ; and, as a consequence,
they wait for someone else to arrange every piece of
work, and are never ready for emergencies, nor able to
‘ take hold.’ ” But when they came to actually board the
children out, all but the parents of nine were suddenly able

PUTTING A PREMIUM ON PAUPERISM

285

to take good care of them themselves, and of the rest three
found a way before final arrangements were made. There
were seventy children in the Home. Pauperism runs in
the same ruts in New York as in Pennsylvania, and the
motive power is the same — ill-spent money.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE VERDICT OF THE POTTER’S FIELD
OOKING back now over the field we have traversed.

I J what is the verdict? Are we going backward or
forward ? To be standing still would be to lose ground.
Nothing stands still in this community of ours, with its
ever-swelling population, least of all the problem of the
children of the poor. It got the start of our old indiffer¬
ence once, and we have had a long and wearisome race of
it, running it down.

But we have run it down. We are moving forward,
and indifference will not again trap us into defeat. Evi¬
dence is multiplying on every hand to show that interest
in the children is increasing. The personal service, that
counts for so infinitely much more than money, is more
freely given day by day, and no longer as a fashionable
fad, but as a duty too long neglected. From the colleges
young men and women are going forth to study the prob¬
lem in a practical way that is full of promise. Charity is
forgetting its petty jealousies and learning the lesson of
organization and co-operation. “Looking back,” writes
the Secretary of the Charity Organization Society, u over
the progress of the last ten years, the success seems large,
while looking at our hopes and aims it often seems mea¬
gre.” The Church is coming up, no longer down, to its
work among the poor. In the multiplication of brother¬
hoods and sisterhoods, of societies of Christian Endeavor,

THE VERDICT OF THE POTTER’S FIELD 287

of King’s Daughters, of efforts on every hand to reach the
masses, the law of love, the only law that has real power
to protect the poor, is receiving fresh illustration day by
day.

The Fresh Air Work, the Boys’ Clubs, the Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, bear witness to it,
and to the energy and resources that shall yet win the
fight for us. They were born of New York’s plight.
The whole world shares in the good they have wrought.

Kindergartens, industrial schools, baby nurseries are
springing up everywhere. We have children’s play¬
grounds, and we shall be getting more, if the promised
small parks are yet in the future. Municipal progress
has not kept step with private benevolence, but there is
progress. New schools have been built this year and
others are planned. We are beginning to understand
that there are other and better ways of making citizens
and voters than to grind them out through the political
naturalization mill at every election. If the rum power
has not lost its grip, it has not tightened it, at all events,
in forty years. Then there was one saloon to every 90.8
inhabitants ; to-day there is one to every 236.42.* The
streets in the tenement districts, since I penned the first
lines of this book, have been paved and cleaned as never
before, and new standards of decency set up for the poor
who live there and for their children. Jersey Street, Pov¬
erty Gap, have disappeared, and an end has been put, for a

* In 1854, with a population of 605,000, there were 6,657 licensed
and unlicensed saloons in the city, or 1 to every 90.8 of its inhabitants.
At the beginning of 1892, with a population of 1,706,500, there were
7,218 saloons, or 1 to every 236.42. Counting all places where liquor
was sold by license, including hotels, groceries, steamboats, etc., the
number was 9,050, or 1 to every 188.56 inhabitants.

19

288

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

time at least, to the foul business of refuse gathering at
the dumps. Nothing stands still in New York. Condi¬
tions change so suddenly, under the pressure of new exi¬
gencies, that it is sometimes difficult to keep up with them.
The fact that it is generally business which prompts the
changes for the better has this drawback, that the com¬
munity, knowing that relief is coming sooner or later, gets
into the habit of waiting for it to come that way as the
natural one. It is not always the natural way, and though
relief comes with bustle and stir at last, it is sometimes
too long delayed.

Another mischievous habit, characteristic of the Ameri¬
can people, preoccupied with so many urgent private con¬
cerns, is to rise up and pass a law that is loudly in demand,
and let it go with that, as if all social evils could be cured
by mere legal enactment. As a result, some of the best
and most necessary laws are dead letters on our statute
books. The law is there, but no one thinks of enforcing
it. The beginning was made at the wrong end ; but we
shall reach around to the other in season.

The chief end has been gained in the recognition of the
child problem as the all-important one, of the develop¬
ment of individual character as the strongest barrier
against the evil forces of the street and the tenement.
Last year I had occasion to address a convention at the
National Capital, on certain phases of city poverty and suf¬
fering, and made use of the magic lantern to enforce some
of the lessons presented. The last picture put on the
screen showed the open trench in the Potter’s Field.
When it had passed, the Secretary of the Convention, a
clergyman whose life has been given to rescue work among
homeless boys, told how there had just come to join him
in his work the man who had until very lately been in

THE VERDICT OF THE POTTER’S FIELD 289

charge of this Potter’s Field. His experience there had
taught him that the waste before which he stood helpless
at that end of the line, looking on without power to check
or relieve, must be stopped at its source. So he had
turned from the dead to the living, pledging the years
that remained to him to that effort.

It struck me then, and it has seemed to me since, that
this man’s position to the problem was most comprehen¬
sive. The evidence of his long-range view was convinc¬
ing. Society had indeed arrived at the same diagnosis
some time before. Reasoning by exclusion, as doctors do
in doubtful diseases, the symptoms of which are clearer
than their cause, it had conjectured that if the “tough”
whom it must maintain in idleness behind prison-bars, to
keep him from preying upon it, was a creature of en¬
vironment, not justly to blame, the community must be,
for allowing him to grow up a “ tough.” So, in self-
defence, it had turned its hand to the forming of charac¬
ter in proportion as it had come to own its failure to re¬
form it. To that failure the trench in the Potter’s Field
bore unceasing witness. Its claim to be heard in evidence
was incontestable.

How that it has been heard, its testimony confirms the
judgment that had already experience to back it. There
is no longer room for doubt that with the children lies
the solution of the problem of poverty, as far as it can be
reached under existing forms of society and with our
machinery for securing justice by government. The
wisdom of generations that were dust two thousand years
ago made this choice. We have been long in making it,
but not too long if our travail has made it clear at last that
for all time to come it must be the only safe choice. And
this, whether from the standpoint of the Christian or the
19

290

THE CHILDREN OF THE POOR

unbeliever, from that of humanity or mere business. If
the matter is reduced to a simple sum in arithmetic, so
much for so much — child-rescue, as the one way of bal¬
ancing waste with gain, loss with profit, becomes the
imperative duty of society, its chief bulwark against
bankruptcy and wreck.

Thus, through the gloom of the Potter’s Field that has
levied such heavy tribute on our city in the past — even
the tenth of its life — brighter skies, a new hope, are
discerned beyond. They brighten even the slum tene¬
ment, and shine into the home which just now we des¬
paired of reaching by any other road than that of pull¬
ing it down. Tireless, indeed, the hands need be that
have taken up this task. Flag their efforts ever so little,
hard-won ground is lost, mischief done. But we are gain¬
ing, no longer losing, ground. Seen from the tenement,
through the frame-work of injustice and greed that cursed
us with it, the outlook seemed little less than despairing.
Groping vainly, with unseeing eyes, we said : There is
no way out. The children, upon whom the curse of the
tenement lay heaviest, have found it for us. Truly it
was said : “ A little child shall lead them.”

REGISTER OF CHILDREN’S CHARITIES

AS PUBLISHED BY THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY

In addition to the charities given here, seventy-eight
churches of all denominations conduct weekly industrial
and sewing classes, generally on Saturdays, for which see
the Directory of the Charity Organization Society, under
Churches, where may also be found the register of thirty-
two fresh-air funds not recorded below, and of some kin¬
dergartens and clubs established by various churches for
the children of their congregations.

NURSERIES.

AGES RECEIVED.

Ahawath Chesed Sisterhood, 71 East 3d St . 3 to 6 yrs.

Bethany Day Nursery, 453 East 57th St . 2 weeks to 6 yrs.

Beth-El Society, 355 East 62d St . 2\ to 6 yrs.

Bethlehem Day Nursery, 249 East 30th St. . . 1 week to 7 yrs.

Children’s Charitable Union, 70 Av. D . 3 to 7 yrs.

Day Nursery and Babies’ Shelter, 118 West

21st St . 1 to 5 yrs.

ficoLE Franqaise Gratuite and Salle d’Asile,

69 Washington Square . 2 to 11 yrs.

Emanu-El Sisterhood, 159 East 74th St . 3 to 6 yrs.

Grace House Day Nursery, 94 Fourth Av . 1 to 8 yrs.

Hope Nursery, 226 Thompson St .

Jewell Day Nursery, 20 Macdougal St . 2 to 5 yrs.

Manhattan Working Girls’ Association, 440

East 57th St . 2 weeks to 10 yrs.

Memorial Day Nursery, 275 East Broadway . 1 to 6 yrs.

Riverside Day Nursery, 121 West 63d St . 1 mo. to 8 yrs.

St. Agnes’ Day Nursery, 7 Charles St . 8 days to 6 yrs.

292

REGISTER OF CHILDREN’S CHARITIES

AGES RECEIVED.

St. Barnabas’ House, 304 Mulberry St . 4 weeks to 8 yrs.

St. Chrysostom Chapel Nursery, 224 West 38th

St .

St. John’s Day Nursery, 223 East 67th St . 1 to 6 yrs.

St. Joseph’s Day Nursery, 473 West 57th St . 2 weeks to 7 yrs.

St. Stephen’s Equity Club, Kindergarten and

Nursery, 59 West 46th St .

St. Thomas’ Day Nursery, 231 East 59th St . — to 6 yrs.

Salle d’Asile et Ecole Primaire, 2 South 5th Av. 3 to 8 yrs.

Silver Cross Day Nursery, 2249 Second Av . 2 weeks to 10 yrs.

Sunnyside Day Nursery, 51 Prospect PI . 2 weeks to 7 yrs.

Virginia Day Nursery, 632 5th St . 6 mos. to 6 yrs.

Wayside Day Nursery, 216 East 20th St . 2 mos. to 7 yrs.

West Side Day Nursery, 266 West 40th St . 18 mos. to 7 yrs.

Wilson Industrial School Day Nursery, 125 St.

Mark’s PI . 1 mo. to 6 yrs.

KINDERGARTENS.

Ahawath Chesed Sisterhood Free Kindergarten. .71 East 3d St.
All Souls’ Church Free Kindergarten,

70th St. East of Lexington Av.

Beth-El Society Free Kindergarten . 355 East 62d St.

Central Presbyterian Church Free Kindergarten,

454 West 42d St.

Cherry Street Kindergarten . 340 Cherry St.

Children’s Charitable Union Kindergarten . 70 Av. D.

East Side Chapel and Bible Women’s Association Kindergarten,

404 East 15th St.

East Side House Kindergarten . Foot of East 76tli St.

Emanu-El Sisterhood Kindergarten . 159 E. 74th St.

Free Kindergarten Ass’n, of Harlem, No. 1 School,

2048 First Av.

Free Kindergarten of St. John’s Chapel . Varick near Beach.

French Free School . 69 South Washington Sq.

Hebrew Free School Association. . . .East B’way and Jefferson St.
Kindergarten of Madison Square Presbyterian Church House,

Third Av. and 30th St.

“ “ St. George’s Av. A Mission . 253 Av. A.

“ “ “ Chapel . . . 130 Stanton St.

REGISTER OF CHILDREN’S CHARITIES 293

Kindergarten of Shearith Israel Congregation, 5 West 19th St.
Ladies’ Bikur Cholim Society Kindergarten, 177 East Broadway.

Neighborhood Guild Kindergarten . 146 Forsyth St.

N. Y. Foundling Hospital Kindergarten . 175 East 68th St.

N. Y. Kindergarten Association Schools :

No. 1, 221 East 51st St.

No. 2, Alumnae Kindergarten, cor. 63d St. and First Av.

No. 3, 228 West 35th St.

No. 4, 348 West 26th St.

No. 5, Shaw Memorial, 61 Henry St.

No. 6, McAlpine, 62 Second St.

No. 7, Ay. A and 15th St.

St. Andrews’ Free Kindergarten . 2067 Second Av.

St. Bartholomew’s “ . . 209 East 42d St.

St. James’ Free Kindergarten . Av. A and 78th St.

St. Mary’s Kindergarten . 438 Grand St.

Shaaray Tefilla Sisterhood Kindergarten. . . .127 West 44th St.

Silver Cross “ “ . 2249 Second Av.

Society for Ethical Culture “ _ 109 West 54th St.

Temple Israel Sisterhood Kindergarten. ..125th St. and 5th Av.

Trinity Church Ass’n “ . 209 Fulton St.

Wilson Industrial School Kindergarten . 125 St. Mark’s PI.

INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS.

Abigail School and Kindergarten . 242 Spring St.

American Female Guardian Society. . Office, 32 East 30th St.

Home School . 29 East 29th St.

Industrial School No. 1 . 552 First Av. cor. 32d St.

“ “ “ 2 (Rose Memorial) . 418 West 41st St.

“ « “ 3 . 124 West 26th St.

« “ “ 4 . .34 Willett St.

«« “ “ 5 . 220 West 36th St.

«* “ “ 6 . 125 Allen St.

« “ “ 7 . 234 East 80th St.

“ “ “ 8 . 463 West 32d St.

“ “ 9 . East 60th St. and Boulevard.

“ «* “ 10 . 125 Lewis St.

“ “ *‘11 . 52d St. and Second Av.

u “ “ 12 . 2247 Second Av

294

REGISTER OF CHILDREN’S CHARITIES

Children’s Aid Society . Office, 24 St. Mark’s PL

Industrial Schools —

Astor Memorial . 256 Mott St.

Av. B . 607 East 14th St.

Cottage Place . 208 Bleecker St.

Brace Memorial . 9 Duane St.

East River . 247 East 44th St.

East Side . 287 East Broadway.

Eleventh Ward . 295 Eighth St.

Fourth Ward . 73 Monroe St.

Fifth Ward . 36 Beach St.

Fifty-Second Street . 573 West 52d St.

German . 272 Second St.

Henrietta . 215 East 21st St.

Italian . 156 Leonard St.

Jones Memorial . 407 East 73d St.

Lord . 135 Greenwich St.

Park . 68th St. near Broadway.

Phelps . 314 East 35th St.

Rhinelander . 350 East 88th St.

Sixteenth Ward . 211 West 18th St.

Sixth Street . 632 Sixth St.

West Side . . 201 West 32d St.

West Side Italian . 24 Sullivan St.

Night Schools —

German . 272 Second St.

Italian . 156 Leonard St.

Brace Memorial (Newsboys) . 9 Duane St.

Eleventh Ward . 295 8th St.

East Side . 287 East Broadway.

Lord . 135 Greenwich St.

Jones Memorial . 407 East 73d St.

Fifty-Second Street . 573 West 52d St.

West Side . 400 Seventh Av.

Church Society for Promoting Christianity among Jews (In¬
dustrial School for Girls) . 68 East 7th St.

Eighth Ward Mission School . 1 Charlton St.

Five Points House of Industry . 155 Worth St.

“ “ Mission . 63 Park St.

Free German School . 140 East 4th St.

Hebrew Free School Association, East Broadway and Jefferson St.

295

REGISTER OF CHILDREN’S CHARITIES

Italian Mission (P.E. School for Girls) . 309 Mulberry St.

Industrial Christian Alliance . 113 Macdougal St.

Louis Down-Town Sajbbath and Daily School (Hebrew),

267 Henry St.

Mission of the Immaculate Virgin,

Lafayette PI. and Great Jones St.

Mission School of All Souls’ Church . 213 East 21st St.

New York Bible and Tract Mission (School for Girls),

422 East 26th St.

New York House and School of Industry . 120 West 16th St.

Sisterhood of the Good Shepherd (P. E.) . 419 West 19th St.

St. Barnabas House . 304 Mulberry St.

St. Vincent de Paul Industrial School . 346 West 43d St.

St. Elizabeth Industrial School . 235 East 14th St.

Spanish Industrial School . 1345 Lexington Av.

Trinity Industrial School . 90 Trinity PI.

St. George’s Industrial School . Teutonia Hall.

Trinity Chapel Industrial School . 15 West 25th St.

St. Augustine’s Chapel Industrial School . . 105 East Houston St.

St. Mary’s . Lawrence St., Manhattanville.

West Side Industrial School . 266 West 40th St.

Wilson Industrial School . . 125 St. Mark's PI.

United Hebrew Charities (Industrial School for Girls),

128 Second Av.

Zion and St. Timothy Industrial School . 332 West 57th St.

FRESH AIR WORK.

The Tribune Fresh-Air Fund . Tribune Building.

Bartholdi Creche . 21 University PI.

Children’s Aid Society — Health Home . West Coney Island.

“ “ “ Summer Home . Bath Beach.

The King’s Daughters Tenement-House Committee,

77 Madison St.

New York Infirmary for Women and Children, 5 Livingston PI.

New York City Mission and Tract Society . 106 Bible House.

St. John’s Guild . 501 Fifth Av.

“ “ Floating Hospital. . . .(every week-day but Saturday).

“ “ Seaside Hospital . Cedar Grove, Staten Island.

Sanitarium for Hebrew Children . . 124 East 14th St.

296

REGISTER OF CHILDREN’S CHARITIES

Society for Ethical Culture . 109 West 54th St.

New York Association for Improving the Condition

of the Poor (Ocean Parties) . . 79 Fourth Av.

St. Barnabas Fresh-Air Fund . 38 Bleecker St.

The Little Mothers’ Aid Society . 305 East 17th St.

New York Bible and Tract Mission . 416 East 26th St.

New York Society for Parks and Play-grounds

for Children . * . . . 36 Union Square.

American Female Guardian Society,

Summer Home at Oceanport, N. J.

Summer Shelter . Morristown, N. J.

(Apply to Charity Organization Society, 21 University PI.)

BOYS’ CLUBS AND READING-ROOMS.

Ascension Memorial Chapel (P.E.) . 330 West 43d St.

Avenue C Club . , . . . , . . . . .65 East 14th St.

Bethany Church . Tenth Av., bet. 35th and 36th Sts.

Calvary Parish . . . 344 East 23d St.

Chapel of the Comforter . „ . .814 Greenwich St.

Christ Chapel . West 65th St. near Amsterdam Av.

Church of the Archangel (P. E.) _ 117th St. and St. Nicholas Av.

Church of the Redeemer . Park Av. and 81st St.

College Settlement. . . * . . 95 Rivington St.

Covenant Chapel . 310 East 42d St.

DeWitt Chapel . 160 West 29th St.

East Side House . . . . Foot of 76th St. and East River.

Free Reading-Rooms,

8 West 14th. St., 330 Fourth Av., and 590 Seventh Av.

Grace Mission . 640 East 13th St.

Holy Communion (P. E.) Church . 49 West 20th St.

Holy Cross Lyceum * . 43d St., bet. Eighth and Ninth Aves.

Holy Cross Mission. . . . 300 East Fourth St.

Lafayette Club (Middle Collegiate Church) . 14 Lafayette PI.

Mission Chapel of Madison Av. Church . 440 East 57th St.

Madison Square Church House . Third Av., cor. 30th St.

Manor Chapel _ _ _ _ ' . 348 West 26th St.

Memorial Baptist Church . Washington Square, South.

Monday Night Club (Church of Holy Communion), 49 West 20th St.
Neighborhood Guild . . . . . . . . ...147 Forsyth St.

REGISTER OF CHILDREN’S CHARITIES

297

New Jerusalem Church . 114 East 35th St.

North Side Boys’ Club . 79 Macdougal St.

St. Bartholomew’s Parish House . 207 East 42d St.

St. George’s (P. E.) Church (Memorial House) . 207 East 16th St.

St. Luke’s M. E. Church (Knights of St. Luke) . 108 West 41st St.

St. Mary’s . Lawrence St., Manliattanville.

West Side . Vermilye Chapel, 794 Tenth Av.

Wilson Mission Building (“ Av. A Club”) . 125 St. Mark’s PI.

CHILDREN S LODGING-HOUSES.

Brace Memorial . 9 Duane St.

Girls’ Temporary Home . . 307-309 East 12th St.

Tompkins Square . 295 8th St.

East Side . 287 East Broadway.

Forty-fourth Street . 247 East 44th St.

West Side . 400 Seventh Av.

Mission of the Immaculate Virgin,

Lafayette PI. and Great Jones St.

CHILDREN’S HOMES— TEMPORARY AND PERMANENT.

Asylum of St. Vincent de Paul . 215 West 39th St.

Asylum of Sisters of St. Dominic (House of Reception),

137 Second St.

Berachah Orphanage (Gospel Tabernacle) . 692 Eighth Av.

Bethlehem Orphan and Half-Orphan Asylum, College Point, L. I.
(Controlled by thirteen Lutheran churches of New York and
vicinity. )

Children’s Fold . 92d St. and Eighth Av.

Colored Orphan Asylum . West 143d St. and Boulevard.

Free Home for Destitute Young Girls. . . . 23 East 11th St.

Dominican Convent of Our Lady of the Rosary, 329 East 63d St.

Five Points House of Industry . 155 Worth St.

German Odd Fellows’ Orphanage. .Apply at Home, 82 Second Av.
Hebrew Benevolent and Orphan Asylum,

Amsterdam Av. and 136th St.
Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Orphan Asylum,

Eleventh Av. and 151st St.

298

REGISTER OF CHILDREN’S CHARITIES

Holy Angels’ Orphan Asylum (for Italian Children from New York),

West Park-on-the-Hudson.

House of Mercy . 81st St. and Madison Av.

Ladies’ Deborah Nursery and Child’s Protectory, Male De¬
partment, 95 East Broadway and 83 Henry St.; Female Department,
East 162d St. , near Eagle Av.

Leake and Watts Orphan House _ Ludlow Station, Hudson R. R.

Messiah Home for Little Children . 4 Rutherford PI.

Mission of the Immaculate Virgin for Homeless and Destitute

Children . Lafayette PI. and Great Jones St.

St. Joseph’s Home for Destitute Children,

House of Reception, 143 West 31st Street.
New York Foundling Hospital (Asylum of Sisters of Charity),

175 East 68th St.

New York Infant Asylum . Amsterdam Av. and 61st St.

Orphanage of the Church of the Holy Trinity, 400 East 50th St.

Orphan Asylum Society . Riverside Drive and West 73d St.

Orphans’ Home and Asylum of Protestant Episcopal Church,

49th St. near Lexington Av.

Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum . Madison Av. and 51st St.

St. Agatha’s Home for Children . 209 West 15th St.

St. Ann’s Home for Destitute Children . Av. A, cor. 90th St.

St. Benedict’s Home for Colored Children,

House of Reception, 120 Macdougal St.

St. Christopher’ s Home . Riverside Drive and 1 12th St.

St. James’ Home . 21 Oliver and 26 James St.

St. Joseph’s Orphan Asylum . 89th St. and Av. A.

Shepherd’s Fold (P. E. Church) . 92d St. and Eighth Av.

Protestant Half-Orphan Asylum . . . .Manhattan Av. near 104th St.
Home for Seamen’s Children (New York and vicinity),

West New Brighton, S. I.

Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children,

100 East 23d St.

REFORMATORY INSTITUTIONS.

Burnham Industrial Farm . Office, 135 East 15th St.

Hebrew Sheltering Guardian Society,

Eleventh Av. and 151st St.

New York Catholic Protectory . Office, 415 Broome St.

New York Juvenile Asylum . 176th St. and Amsterdam Av.

REGISTER OF CHILDREN'S CHARITIES

299

St. James’ Home . 21 Oliver St.

House of Refuge . Randall’s Island.

House of the Holy Family . 132 Second Av.

CHILDREN’S HOSPITALS AND DISPENSARIES.

All Saints’ Convalescent Home for Men and Boys (Holy Cross

Mission) . Avenue C and 4th St.

Babies’ Hospital of the City of New York . 657 Lexington Av.

Babies’ Ward, Post-Graduate Hospital . 226 East 20th St.

Children’s Hospital . Randall’s Island.

New York Infirmary for Women and Children. 5 Livingston PL

Five Points House of Industry Infirmary . 147 Worth St.

Good Samaritan Diakonissen (Hahnemann Hospital),

Park Av. aDd 67th St.

Infants’ Hospital . Randall’s Island.

Laura Franklin Free Hospital for Children. .17 East 111th St.

New York Foundling Hospital . 175 East 68th St.

Nursery and Child’s Hospital . Lexington Av. and 51st St.

St. Mary’s Free Hospital for Children . 405 West 34th St.

Harlem Dispensary for Women and Children. . .2331 Second Av.
Sick Children’s Mission of Children s Aid Society,

287 East Broadway.

Yorkville Dispensary and Hospital for Women and Chil¬

dren . 1307 Lexington Av.

New York Orthopaedic Hospital . 126 East 59th St.

New York Ophthalmic Hospital . 201 East 23d St.

ASYLUMS FOR DEFECTIVE CHILDREN.

Crippled Boys’ Home (Forty-fourth Street Lodging House),

247 East 44th St.

Institution for the Improved Instruction of Deaf Mutes,

Lexington Av. and 67th St.

Idiot Asylum . Randall’s Island.

New York Institution for the Blind . Ninth Av. and 34th St.

New York Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and

Dumb . Eleventh Av. and 163d St.

New York Society for the Relief of the Ruptured and
Crippled . Lexington Av. and 42d St.

300 REGISTER OF CHILDREN’S CHARITIES

St. Joseph’s Institution for the Improved Instruction of Deaf

Mutes . 772 East 188th St.

Sheltering Arms . Amsterdam Av. and 129th St.

Society of St. Johnland, Apply at Calvary Chapel, 220 East 23d St.
Syracuse State School for Feeble-Minded,

(Apply to Superintendent of Out-door Poor.)

Children’s Aid Society . Haxtun Cottage, Bath Beach, L. I.

House of St. Giles the Cripple . 422 Degraw St., Brooklyn.

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